Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ENVIRONMENT

Local Government Finance

Mr. Terry Fields: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what proposals he is considering to amend the community charge regulations.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): The operation of the community charge is of course being monitored. I have no proposals, at present, for changes to the regulations.

Mr. Fields: In the light of that reply, does the Minister accept that his policies on the poll tax and uniform business rate will increase dramatically the already record levels of bankruptcy among small business people, and have resulted in 200 shops and small businesses in the Minister's own constituency closing down? The policies were dramatically exposed in The Guardian by Mr. Francis Ching, who said that the poll tax was robbing the poor left, right and centre. It is an absolute scandal, and for the Minister to come to the House with such a reply is a disgrace.

Mr. Patten: With respect, the hon. Gentleman might await my reply. He had the courtesy to refer to my constituency, where two issues come together—first, the uniform business rate and secondly, revaluation. It is common to all parties that we support revaluation. That was made clear in January by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould). We proposed a transitional scheme, about which I hope to have the opportunity to say more later. In my constituency, small businesses are considerably helped by the uniform business rate, which protects them from the higher rate increases that result from Avon's spending decisions. If the Opposition are now in favour of the uniform business rate, as well as revaluation, they will have a story to tell in my constituency and other places in the south.

Mr. Hill: My right hon. Friend may or may not propose to amend the regulations, but in the meantime the administration of the exemptions at local government level is what worries many of my colleagues. People are waiting weeks and weeks to receive the decision from their local authorities. In my case, Southampton city council is Labour controlled and has the poorest administration. People are waiting weeks in fear and trembling that they will not receive the exemptions.

Mr. Patten: I am concerned about what my hon. Friend says. To be fair to local authorities as a whole, in most the arrangements have gone pretty well and, as I was proposing to say later, most bills have gone out net of both transitional relief and benefit, which is commendable for the local authority staff involved. Where local authorities have done less well, there is cause for concern. That should be recognised by local authorities and we should compare what some have done with what the majority have managed to achieve.

Mr. McCrindle: May we take it from what my right hon. Friend said in his original answer that, in addition to reviewing any operational defects of the community charge, he will look at how the uniform business rate is operating in all parts of the country? Does he agree that although we concede that revaluation was long overdue, there is evidence that, in conjunction with rising rents in some areas, the difficulties being experienced by small businesses are considerable? Surely, it can be no part of the introduction of the uniform rate for small businesses to go the wall.

Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend makes a fair point about the interaction of rent levels and revaluation. In my constituency, even with revaluation, rates will represent only about 20 per cent. of the rental levels faced by small businesses. We must consider the transitional arrangements that the House has agreed for small businesses. I have made it clear time and again that if it proves necessary to extend the transitional period to ensure that small businesses avoid steep rises in their rates towards the end of that period, we shall be prepared to do so.

Mr. Pike: In a written answer to me last week, the Under-Secretary of State said that there was no intention of changing the basic principle underlying the community charge, which is that almost all adults should pay a contribution towards providing local services. As he emphasised that there was no change in that basic principle, what changes do the Government intend to make to remove the unfairness of the present system?

Mr. Patten: I wholly endorse what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State said. I shall be saying one or two things about the operation of the community charge later this afternoon and I suggest that the hon. Gentleman stays to hear the speeches.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: While my right hon. Friend is conducting his review of the community charge, will he seriously consider disaggregating married couples, which has already been done for national taxation? Figures researched by the Library suggest that that would cost between £1 billion and £1·5 billion, but instead of angling the extra money to profligate councils, such as Lancashire county council, that would give the money directly to those, such as married and retired couples and young mothers, who actually need the help.

Mr. Patten: I note what my hon. Friend has said. She and other hon. Members have mentioned that issue in the past. It produces a quite different set of anomalies, but we shall certainly consider it in the next few weeks.

Mr. Gould: Are not the Secretary of State and his right hon. Friends engaged in a desperate search for a way out of the mess that they have created? Will he confirm, for example, that a meeting was recently arranged between


senior officials of Strathclyde regional council and someone described mysteriously as an influential Conservative Member of Parliament? Will he further confirm—in case he does not know the answer, I shall tell him it—that that influential Conservative Member of Parliament was none other than his right hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), who, just a few months ago, was the Prime Minister's campaign manager in the leadership election contest?

Mr. Patten: I am afraid that although my responsibilities run all too wide, they do not cover either the diary of my right hon. Friend the Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) or the activities of Strathclyde regional council. But as I imagine that the hon. Gentleman will be able to give us more information about this spectacular cross-border conspiracy later this afternoon, I look forward to hearing about it. We are also all agog to hear more about the Labour party's proposals.

Homelessness

Miss Hoey: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he has any proposals to use empty Government-owned property for homeless people.

The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. Michael Spicer): It is Government policy to sell such empty houses that are no longer needed. Where disposal is not practicable, Departments let property to local authorities or housing associations to relieve local housing pressures.

Miss Hoey: Is the Minister aware that there are about 35,000 Government-owned properties and that in the south-east alone there are more than 1,000 properties owned by the Ministry of Defence—some of them shown in pictures such as I have here? Does not he think it a scandal that about 18 per cent. of Government-owned properties are lying empty while only 2 per cent. of local authorities' properties are empty? How can he tell local authorities how to manage their housing when the Government obviously cannot manage their own?

Mr. Spicer: Our policy is to sell Government houses that are not required or, when appropriate, to rent them on a short-term basis. To answer the hon. Lady directly, what is a national scandal is that housing authorities that are directly responsible for managing the housing stock are sitting on more than 100,000 empty council houses in England alone. The worst offenders are overwhelmingly Labour authorities. Labour is presiding over housing waste on a massive scale while at the same time bleating about homelessness.

Mr. Ian Taylor: Will my hon. Friend note that one of the great problems for the homeless in Lambeth is the cynical disregard of their plight by a local authority that has 2,000 empty homes, 1,900 people in expensive bed-and-breakfast accommodation and rent and rate arrears of £66 million? Would not the best news for the homeless in Lambeth be a return of a Conservative local authority on 3 May?

Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend makes a perfect point, which exactly illustrates what I have just been saying.

Mr. Soley: The Minister is misleading the House: it is not the Government's policy to sell these houses. Many of them have been standing empty for more than 10 years.

There are literally dozens in my area belonging to the prison department that have been empty for 10 years, three years and so on. Why does not the Minister arrange for them to be let, through housing associations and local authorities? Does not he remember opening the Institute of Housing exhibition in this very House only a few weeks ago, in which the displays demonstrated that the Government's record is worse than that of any other housing body—local authority, housing association or private? In percentage terms, the Government have three times as many empty properties as local authorities. The Minister cannot blame local authorities when he is incapable of providing for homeless people the housing that he has right now.

Mr. Spicer: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman spoke about percentage terms, because we have a much smaller housing stock than local authorities, which are, of course, responsible for housing. Of course the percentage could be lower. The answer to the hon. Gentleman is that the Government, and especially Departments such as the Ministry of Defence, have to keep surplus housing for contingency purposes. The hon. Gentleman will undoubtedly be able to guess for himself what those purposes are. When properties cannot be sold we are beginning to let them to housing authorities. There have been 570 lets in recent months, so the hon. Gentleman is quite wrong to say that the property is not being shifted.

Mr. Wood: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the distribution of the £250 million package to combat homelessness in London and the south-east.

Mr. Michael Spicer: Allocations of £112 million have been made this year to local authorities. In addition, the Housing Corporation has announced £45 million worth of housing association schemes to help the homeless over the next two years. Bids for the remaining £93 million will be invited later in the year.

Mr. Wood: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply. How much of that money will be used to bring empty properties into use? What is being done to speed up the work of housing associations and others so that they can bring more affordable rented property on to the market in the south-east as an alternative to local authority accommodation?

Mr. Spicer: The objective of that money is largely to bring into use housing that is not being used properly, thus releasing people from bed-and-breakfast places. That will help directly the single homeless. In that context I am placing in the Library today a list of 26 voluntary organisations that will be offered a total of about £1 million of funding this year for projects that will relieve or prevent single homelessness.

Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Minister realise that the record number of homeless people means that there is a record number of disfranchised people in London and the south-east and in the rest of the country? Is not the truth of the Government's tragic and scandalous record of failing to provide housing, that people without houses do not support the Government and people who do not support the Government do not get a vote?

Mr. Spicer: The hon. Gentleman talks about the scandalous record of the Government in not providing


housing. An extra 1·7 million houses have been provided over the past 10 years whereas the population has risen by less than 1 million. However, the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a problem of homelessness. It could be relieved overnight if Labour-controlled local authorities put on the market their void housing. Nevertheless, one needs to look at why there is a homelessness problem. It is overwhelmingly a matter of families splitting because of problems at home. That creates a demand for two houses when before there was a demand for one.

Mr. Squire: While accepting the congratulations, at least from Conservative Members, on the Government's latest package, my hon. Friend will of course accept that there is concern about homelessness on both sides of the House. Does not he find it astonishing that the Opposition's only solution, amid their carping about the Government's proposals, is to spend more money on local authorities, which too often have high rent arrears and long relet periods, and which exhibit a general incompetence which, among other things, was commented upon at length by the Audit Commission?

Mr. Spicer: My hon. Friend is right. We are often accused of not providing enough resources. Rent arrears are overwhelmingly found in Labour-controlled local authorities. Some £319 million is not being raised because of rent arrears, and responsibility for the overwhelming part of that lies with Labour-controlled authorities. My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to that scandalous situation.

Local Government Finance

Mr. Illsley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment to what factors he ascribes the standard spending assessment for Barnsley metropolitan district council being the lowest of the metropolitan district authorities.

The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. David Hunt): Barnsley's SSA of £112 million, or £669 per adult, has been calculated in accordance with the distribution report approved by the House on 18 January, using the factors applicable to all metropolitan district councils. Those factors reflect the demographic, physical and social characteristics of each authority area.

Mr. Illsley: The Minister is probably aware that, even under the grant-related expenditure assessment, Barnsley's grant was always at the bottom of the list. At this late stage, will he look at Barnsley's SSA, as the low assessment has led to Barnsley being capped? That is unfair when Manchester has an assessment of £1,170 per adult to provide the same level of services.

Mr. Hunt: I regret that Barnsley should have chosen to budget to spend excessively, and the figures are clear. In Barnsley's case, the budget of £142 million for 1990–91 is almost 27 per cent. above its SSA, which is equivalent to £178 per adult above the SSA. Using the measure used by the hon. Gentleman, the budget is also some 19 per cent. above the rescaled 1989–90 grant-related expenditure, so, on any reasonable measure, the budget is excessive.

Waste

Mr. Donald Thompson: T: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what new controls he is introducing to tighten the regulation of the disposal of waste.

The Minister for the Environment and Countryside (Mr. David Trippier): The Environmental Protection Bill will extend and strengthen local authorities' powers to control licensed waste disposal and, through the duty of care, will place new responsibilities on the producers and carriers of waste.

Mr. Thompson: In my constituency, many 'waste disposal activities have been carried out sensitively. Is my hon. Friend as worried as I am about the future plans for Todmorden moor, which lies between our constituencies, where it is intended to take out coal and put in waste?

Mr. Trippier: I am aware of the problems associated with Todmorden moor and of the keen interest and concern that characterises my hon. Friend's assiduous work in his constituency. As he knows, it will be for Calderdale metropolitan council to consider the matter and the specific points that he outlined.

Mr. Hardy: Will the controls that the Minister mentioned have any effect on the problems in my constituency, about which I know that he is concerned, or does he think that those problems can be resolved only by the legal action that is under way?

Mr. Trippier: The problem in Wath upon Dearne, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, may be settled through the courts, although whether it is to be within the jurisdiction of the American or of the British courts has still to be decided. We both know that it is a unique and difficult example. The Environmental Protection Bill strengthens controls and enshrines tougher measures covering the importation of hazardous waste.

Mr. Butler: Is my hon. Friend aware that 181 operations in London are licensed to discharge radioactivity, but do not have to reveal either what sort of radioactivity it is, or the level? Should not that be on a public register?

Mr. Trippier: The Environmental Protection Bill will enshrine legislation to cover that point. Part of it deals with radioactivity, and many other parts cover increased public access to environmental information.

Ms. Walley: In a short time, we have seen how terribly important is the control of all aspects of toxic waste. While we welcome the tighter controls that will be implemented by the Bill, will not there be a special problem with chemical special waste treatment plants and toxic waste incinerators? Despite all the Minister's assurances during the passage of the Environmental Protection Bill, will he assure us again that he is in touch with what is happening on the ground? What extra staff will be needed by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution so that it can take on board its extra responsibilities arising from integrated pollution control when those responsibilities are transferred to it from the waste disposal authorities?

Mr. Trippier: The hon. Lady may recall that, under the Bill, the regulatory role is placed in the hands of local authorities. An environment audit on the various plans has to be submitted to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of


State, and that is true of Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution. Relatively few staff will be involved. Responsibility for regulation will remain with the local authorities, and it will be for them to provide the necessary staff to fulfil that task. It is important that I should say that the authorities can now charge for the licensing of the sites. We believe that those charges will cover the costs of the additional staff who will be required.

Housing

Mrs. Golding: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he is taking to make private housing properties which are unfit for human habitation or lacking basic amenities adequate for letting to help reduce waiting lists of local authorities; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Christopher Chope): There is a statutory duty upon local authorities to take action against unfit properties, including those lacking basic amenities. Where such action is taken, financial assistance may be available under the new system of renovation grants starting on 1 July, to help owners carry out the necessary repairs.

Mrs. Golding: I thank the Minister for his reply. I thank him also for visiting my constituency to see the problems on the former coal board site at Crackley. As a result of his visit, the council has written to the owners of the empty properties, none of whom has had the courtesy to reply. When will the Government give additional powers and moneys to local authorities to help them to solve that serious problem?

Mr. Chope: I enjoyed my visit to Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I was grateful to the hon. Lady for her presence. Newcastle-under-Lyme has done well as a result of the Government's housing policies. This year, its housing investment allocation was £4·159 million compared with only £1·69 million last year. That was an increase of about two-and-a-half times. I hope that that gives some satisfaction to the hon. Lady on the resources front. I have said that the local authorities have the appropriate statutory powers. The problem is that some authorities are not exercising those powers.

Mr. Brazier: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of returning such properties to active use would be to go further in liberalising the rented sector? Shorthold tenancies are a step in the right direction, but there is a need to go much further.

Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend is right. The liberalisation that we have already implemented has brought many more properties into use in the private rented sector. In the light of that success, the Government may be looking for further progress.

Mr. O'Brien: Has the Minister read the report of the Association of District Councils, published six months ago, which states that one in seven houses in England and Wales is in need of repair and that the total bill would be a massive £36 billion? The ADC, which is Tory controlled, has urged the Government to provide additional moneys to the public and private sectors so that a start can be made on repairing badly needed houses. Is the Minister aware that the greatest concentration of poor private sector

housing is in the north of England? When will he do something about that? Or does he intend, like his predecessors, to sit back and let further decay take place?

Mr. Chope: All Conservatives are concerned about the quality of the housing stock. The Government's record on improving housing is exemplary. I remind the House that during the last year in which the Labour Government were in office only £90 million was spent on home improvement grants. That massive sum has been exceeded fourfold in many years since then. There are regularly more than 100,000 improvement grants a year now, whereas under the Labour Government we were lucky if there were more than 50,000. That is an example of the Government's fine record on private sector housing.

Mrs. Maureen Hicks: Does my hon. Friend agree that, whatever we say about the private sector, the most effective way of reducing local authority waiting lists is to start on our own doorsteps, as it were, and to fill the empty homes that are available for occupation? There are about 2,000 such homes in Wolverhampton. If we were to collect the rent arrears of £7 million and invest that sum for the homeless, we would begin to get somewhere. There is much rhetoric about the homeless, but I am sure that as a result of the community charge the local authorities will begin to get their house in order.

Mr. Chope: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The best thing that the people of Wolverhampton can do for themselves is to vote for a Conservative council on 3 May.

Mr. Turner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received over the provision of capital investment in housing following the autumn statement; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Michael Spicer: My right hon. Friend receives such representations from time to time, including some drawing attention to the large increases in public expenditure provision for subsidised rented housing that we have announced.

Mr. Turner: Does the Minister accept that the Government's current housing investment policy is disastrous? The bottom has fallen out of the private sector and there is a major problem with pre-1919 houses. Are not hundreds of thousands of people waiting for proper accommodation, including the elderly and the handicapped who need specialised accommodation and who will die before it is provided under this Government's policies? As for Wolverhampton—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should ask only one question.

Mr. Spicer: Public expenditure on housing is massive—£3 billion in housing revenue subsidy;£3 billion in housing credit; and a doubling of Housing Corporation expenditure up to almost £2 billion. The Government are spending astronomical sums. We inherited very bad housing stock from previous Governments, especially Labour ones. The real problem is bad Labour councils not managing their stock properly.

Mr. Channon: Is my hon. Friend aware that the large amount of housing investment made available to the voluntary housing movement is most welcome? Can he forecast the number of dwellings likely to be forthcoming as a result of that money?

Mr. Spicer: The current average build from that money is about 17,000, rising to 20,000. In two years' time, the figure will rise to 34,000 a year.

Mr. Tony Banks: When will the Minister at the Department of the Environment stop making cheapjack political points—[Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must make his own judgment about those matters.

Mr. Banks: Ministers are making cheapjack political points out of the homeless. It is all very well for fat Conservative Members to laugh about homelessness. More than 70 per cent. of my constituency casework relates to housing. If all these wonderful things are being done by the Government, why has homelessness in London doubled during the past 10 years?

Mr. Spicer: I have not been making cheap political points; I have been making rather expensive ones during the past 10 minutes. One reason why the hon. Gentleman represents a constituency with such bad housing is that the housing authorities there and in surrounding constituencies are run by Labour councils. They have mismanaged their housing stock—

Mr. Tony Banks: Those are cheapjack points.

Mr. Spicer: I am giving the facts. I am not necessarily making political points, but simply pointing out the facts to the hon. Gentleman.

Local Government Finance

Mr. John Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what representations he has received about the level of community charge in Barnet.

Mr. David Hunt: I continue to receive representations on many aspects of the community charge.

Mr. Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that the community charge in the London borough of Barnet, whose schools had the best results of any local authority in England and Wales and which educates 2,000 refugees from Brent each day, compares very favourably with that of other local authorities? Will he confirm that its community charge of £338 compares well with the £498 imposed by Brent, £534 imposed by Camden, and £573 imposed by the London borough of Haringey? Does not that contain a message for the community charge payers of Barnet next week?

Mr. Hunt: I agree completely with my hon. Friend. Community charge payers in Barnet pay a £70 contribution to the safety net, without which the charge would be £268. Last week, I had the opportunity of visiting Barnet with my hon. Friend. The most common fear expressed to me by shoppers in the high street was of boundary changes. They asked me to make absolutely certain that none will be made, so that they will not suffer the consequence of becoming charge payers in Brent, Haringey or Camden.

Mr. Blunkett: Barnsley and Calderdale would benefit from the same poll tax levels as in Barnet, as that would help them to sustain some of their services. Over the past two years, the Minister and his predecessors have been happy to present the nation with estimates of gainers and

losers showing that, according to the Government, 60 per cent. of the population would gain from poll tax. When the true figures were known, the Minister and his Department refused to produce them, despite pressure from myself, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) and many other right hon. and hon. Members. Will the Minister confirm that figures from the House of Commons Library's statistical section reveal that, in reality, 28 million people will be losers under poll tax—79 per cent. of the population—and that the figures that he and his Department use are wholly mythical?

Mr. Hunt: That is absolute nonsense. We have published all the figures. The statistics that have been published on many occasions, at frequent intervals, show clearly that as a consequence of the changes to the system, 60 per cent. of households will benefit. Those that do not benefit—such as in Barnsley—would do so if Conservatives were in charge of their councils. The message clearly coming through is that with a Conservative council, one pays a lower community charge. Conservative councils cost less.

Waste

Mr. Colvin: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what is his Department's target for the percentage of household waste that could be recycled using (a) source separation and (b) mechanised separation; and if he will make a statement.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory): Our aim is to recycle 50 per cent. of the useful content of household waste by the end of the century. Achieving that will depend on the right mix of collection and sorting facilities in each area for each waste stream and, above all, on encouraging the market for recycled materials and identifying the environmental benefits of recycling and the real costs of alternatives, such as disposal to landfill.

Mr. Colvin: Has my hon. Friend heard the news that Birmingham city council, in co-operation with the private sector, is managing to recycle 92 per cent. of domestic waste without the need for separation? I thank my hon. Friend for visiting my constituency to see for himself the work done in that respect by Test Valley borough council. What measures does the Department have in mind to encourage local authorities, either with cash or in kind, to recycle more domestic waste?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I know of the scheme that my hon. Friend mentioned, and it sounds very interesting. Test Valley borough council has an excellent record of recycling. I can offer an additional incentive, in that I shall be introducing a new provision into the Environmental Protection Bill allowing waste disposal authorities to pass on to waste collection authorities such as Test Valley the financial credit for avoiding landfill costs by recycling waste instead.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does the Minister accept that Greater Manchester waste disposal authority has done extremely well with its experiments in the mechanical separation of waste? However, the move from an experimental to a permanent basis will depend on the price


that it can obtain for reclaimed materials. What steps are the Government taking to ensure a guaranteed price for reclaimed paper and plastics?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I have heard of that scheme. I have no theoretical preference for separation at source or the later mechanical separation that he mentioned. We are undertaking a number of experiments to see which is the best system. Most recycling makes economic and environmental sense. The Environmental Protection Bill will have the longer-term effect of raising the cost of landfill, which gives added economic incentives to recycling.

Mr. Mans: Does my hon. Friend agree that in creating a market for recycled products—in particular waste paper—it is important to set an example? Will he have a word with colleagues in other Departments to encourage them to use recycled paper, as the Department of the Environment does?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Yes, Sir. That is under active consideration in all Government Departments. I confirm that my Department uses recycled paper for all correspondence, and I hope that hon. Members will consider using recycled paper for their correspondence from the House.

Rents

Mr. Bill Michie: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many councils have so far set rent increases above Government guidelines in England and Wales.

Mr. Michael Spicer: About 75 per cent. of the English authorities which have announced their rents for 1990–91 have set rents above the guideline. On present information, the average rent increase per week is 76p above the guideline.

Mr. Michie: Is not that another sign that the Government have made a pig's ear of the assessment of rent levels to local authorities, as they did with the standard spending assessments and the poll tax? Is not it time that the Government admitted that, and had the courage to apologise to local authorities for the incompetence of the Department of the Environment? There is no doubt that it is having a disastrous effect on the economy of local authorities. Before the Minister answers by saying that Sheffield is Labour controlled, I should tell him that obviously it has had to put up rents because the guidelines are low. In Tory-controlled Redbridge, rents have gone up by£15 a week.

Mr. Spicer: The variations are not excessive. I said 76p and that is not an excessive variation on the Government's estimate. When making their estimates, the Government took into account all the rent rebates that had to be paid and the cost of borrowing. One variant is the maintenance budget, which councils set for themselves. Another variant is rent arrears, and one problem is that in many areas large rent arrears go into the accounts and affect other people's rents. Throughout the country, rents in the public sector are well below market values. That is representative of the subsidies that we are giving towards rents.

Mr. Ron Brown: But surely, morally and politically, those councils have no right to implement Tory policy on

the poll tax or on rents. The Minister should say that those councils can resist and fight back. If democracy means anything, the fight back of the common people means a tremendous amount. People power does not happen only in eastern Europe. It can happen here. Does the Minister agree that those elected representatives can resist and fight back, and should not it be encouraged?

Mr. Spicer: The hon. Gentleman may be surprised to hear that, if I follow him correctly, I agree with him. The Government have done precisely that. They have given local authorities a great deal of discretion over the way in which they raise rents. That is precisely the discretion that they are exercising, so I think that I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

Housing

Mr. Gregory: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the 10 local authorities with the highest number of empty properties.

Mr. Michael Spicer: Local authorities with the highest number of empty council dwellings in April 1989 were Manchester—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Liverpool—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Sheffield—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Salford—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Birmingham—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Sandwell—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Hackney—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Southwark—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Wolverhampton—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; and Newcastle upon Tyne—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."].

Mr. Gregory: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that it makes an absolute mockery of the Labour party's alleged concern for homelessness when its elected councillors cannot give proper care to the homeless within their areas?

Mr. Spicer: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The only other figures that I could have read out would have concerned rent arrears, which is almost the same list.

Mr. Heffer: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that Liverpool's homelessness record is one of the best in the country? Might not that be due to the fact that, since 1983, when Liverpool city council came under Labour control, it has regularly been building houses for the people who live in the area? Is not it true that many of the so-called empty houses are blocks of flats that were built when the Tories were in power and that they are being demolished because they are a blot on the area? Is the Minister aware that the Government practically destroyed industry on Merseyside and that many rent arrears are due to the great poverty in the area?

Mr. Spicer: I am delighted to hear what the hon. Gentleman says. I respond to him by asking him a question: who gave Liverpool the resources to build those houses?

Mr. Dickens: Does the Minister agree that the picture is very much blacker than the list he gave in reply to the question? Is not it a fact that throughout the United Kingdom about 100,000 homes are standing empty in Labour-controlled council areas which, at a stroke, could take 400,000 people off the homeless list? Is not that


diabolical? Instead of carping and shedding tears about it in this place, should not the Opposition get on to their friends in Labour councils about the homeless?

Mr. Spicer: I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The figure of 100,000 has to be compared with only 40,000 people currently in temporary accommodation and 11,000 in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

Mr. Madden: When the Tory flagship in Bradford is sunk without trace, will the Minister give a firm assurance that there is no prospect of his Department blocking grants for the building of new homes for rent and for the modernisation of older homes on the Lower Grange estate in Bradford, where many of my constituents have been living in the most deplorable conditions for many years?

Mr. Spicer: It is this Government who have made the method of allocating credits across the country as transparent and objective as possible. We shall continue to use that objective assessment method in the future as we have done in the recent past.

Local Government Finance

Mr. Stern: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to announce the final levels at which relevant local authorities have been community charge-capped.

Mr. Chris Patten: The date for announcing final caps will depend in part on how authorities react to the caps that I proposed earlier this month, but I expect the capping process to be finalised in time for all capped authorities to set their new budgets by June or July.

Mr. Stern: Does my right hon. Friend find it deplorable that Bristol and Avon are about to waste more community charge payers' money going to court to get the right to spend more community charge payers' money? Is not this a case of heads, charge payers do not win, and tails, they lose?

Mr. Patten: I note what my hon. Friend says. I am sure that many of his constituents will raise an eyebrow about what has happened. I cannot comment on any case before the court, but my hon. Friend will be aware that there have been at least five judicial reviews on rate capping and that the local authorities failed to win any of them.

Mr. Benn: Has the Secretary of State's attention been drawn to a letter that is being sent out by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) to people who write to him about the poll tax, in which he boasts that, when he was Secretary of State for the Environment, he persuaded the Cabinet not to proceed with the poll tax, that he believes that there will have be changes to a system based on the ability to pay and that he intends to take a close interest in the matter? Would not it be a good idea for the Secretary of State to consult his predecessor, who takes the view, shared by many people across the whole political spectrum, that the poll tax is a disaster and cannot continue to operate?

Mr. Patten: I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) intends to take a continuing close interest in the evolution of the community charge. However, I am bound to say that my right hon.

Friend's description of what he did when he was in the Cabinet, which I am sure is accurate, is slightly less illuminating than some of the descriptions of how the right hon. Gentleman justified his time in Cabinet.

Rents

Ms. Primarolo: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he will issue a definition of affordable rents.

Mr. Chope: Housing benefit is available for those tenants who would otherwise have difficulty affording their rents. In addition, subsidies to local authorities and housing associations enable rents to be kept within the reach of people in low-paid employment.

Ms. Primarolo: Yes, we know that, but the Minister was asked for a definition of affordable rents, given that rents vary for different reasons. Council house rents have been forced up by the Government, housing association rents have been forced up by the new financial arrangements and the pressure of interest rates, and housing benefit levels set a maximum rent of £55. The combination of all those factors, in addition to the reduction in the number of people claiming benefit, is to trap people on low pay in their poverty. That housing policy is against the declared aims of the Government and forces people into a poverty trap. What do the Government propose to do about it?

Mr. Chope: Average council rents at about £24 a week are far from unaffordable. The hon. Lady will accept that what is an affordable rent in any given case must be a subjective matter.

Mr. David Nicholson: Is my hon. Friend aware that there is a considerable difference between many council rents and the rents charged by the all-too-small private rented sector? Does he agree that those who are fortunate enough to have council homes should pay realistic rents for good accommodation and that the revenue from such rents should be used to accommodate people who are in housing difficulty?

Mr. Chope: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is the Government's policy that people who occupy council housing and can afford to pay reasonable rents should do so and that those who occupy council housing and cannot afford the rents should be entitled to housing benefit.

Coastal Pollution

Mr. John P. Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what measures he is taking to reduce the risk of excess nutrients building up around the coast.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Details of measures which will reduce inputs of nutrients to our coastal waters are listed in the United Kingdom North sea action plan. The decisions to ban dumping of sewage sludge at sea and to treat all substantial sewage discharges to sea will further reduce nutrient inputs by between 10 and 20 per cent.

Mr. Smith: I thank the Minister for that reply. What does he propose to do to prevent Welsh Water from redirecting sewage discharge from Cardiff bay to the Bristol channel should the bay development go ahead, as


that will add greatly to the risk of eutrophication in the Bristol channel? The matter concerns hon. Members on both sides of the House.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: So far, eutrophication has not been found to be a significant problem in United Kingdom coastal waters and has not increased significantly in recent years. However, the development plans to which the hon. Gentleman alludes will be carefully considered by my Department with that in mind.

Mr. Barry Field: Does my hon. Friend agree that while there has been a welcome across the broad spectrum for banning sewage effluent outfalls, it will be many years before we can provide alternatives because some of them are only just coming on stream, particularly in south coast areas?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: My hon. Friend is right. It takes time to design such schemes and to obtain the necessary planning permission, but we have made an enormous commitment, and the water companies have a substantial investment undertaking, to put in place the necessary schemes. One reason why we are having to spend so much to catch up is that some of the companies languished for too long in the public sector.

Local Government Finance

Mr. Charles Wardle: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many representations he has received from tenants' organisations in favour of capital value rates.

Mr. Chope: I am not aware of having received any representations in favour of capital value rates from tenants' organisations or anyone else.

Mr. Wardle: Would not a system of capital value rates be as unfair to those on low incomes as a local income tax would be unwieldy? Is not by far the fairest and most accountable system of local government finance—subject of course to proper implementation—the community charge?

Mr. Chope: I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. The more people understand about capital value rates, the more they despise the proposition.

Mr. McAllion: If three out of four voters in England rejected a local government tax in the general election, and if a body elected—in the main—outside England subsequently ignored that vote and imposed that local government tax only on England, would the Minister describe those of his fellow countrymen who resisted that undemocratic imposition by every peaceful means open to them as shirkers and anarchists? Does he recognise that the danger of anarchy arises when Governments ignore the principle of democratic consent to law, as the Government have done with the poll tax in Scotland?

Mr. Chope: I do not follow the logic of the hon. Gentleman's argument. I am not well read in the principles of anarchy, but my clear recollection is that the question whether there should be a community charge was put fairly and squarely to the electorate at the last general election.

Mrs. Maureen Hicks: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what assessment he has made of the impact of the uniform business rate on bed-and-breakfast businesses.

Mr. Chope: The impact of the uniform business rate and the non-domestic revaluation on bed-and-breakfast establishments which are subject to rating will vary among properties and areas of the country in the same way as for other properties. I am pleased to see that businesses as a whole in my hon. Friend's constituency will benefit from an average rate reduction of 45 per cent. in cash terms, without transition, as a result of the new business rate arrangements.

Mrs. Hicks: Is my hon. Friend aware of the anxiety about the suggestion of the 100-day rule? Will he examine more closely the problems that it could create? If introduced, it could discourage smaller bed-and-breakfast businesses from operating. That would have a profound effect, and would work against our policy to encourage more tourists to use tourist facilities off-peak.

Mr. Chope: I have met several hon. Friends to discuss the treatment of bed-and-breakfast accommodation. We are considering the arguments that they and others have put to us.

Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister have a word with the Secretary of State for the Environment? Perhaps they could trot down to Bath together. I have been told that there has been a revolt by the business men and women of that constituency. The result of that and other developments is that we could be recycling the whole Government, not just the Secretary of State for the Environment.

Mr. Chope: My right hon. Friend dealt more than adequately with that issue earlier.

Mr. Boswell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list the 10 county councils with the highest percentage overspend over standard spending assessment.

Mr. David Hunt: The list is as follows: Derbyshire—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Avon—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Northumberland—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Cumbria—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Oxfordshire—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Cheshire—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Isle of Wight—[HON. MEMBERS: "Liberal."]; Humberside—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]; Nottinghamshire—[HON. MEMBERS "Labour."]; and Lancashire—[HON. MEMBERS: "Labour."]

Mr. Boswell: Does not that send the clearest possible message to the local government electors that Conservative councils cost them less, and that Labour and other Opposition-controlled councils cost them much more?

Mr. Hunt: I could not agree more: everywhere that we look, Labour councils cost the community charge payer more money.

Ms. Gordon: Is the Minister aware that people in the London borough of Barnet who want to go swimming go to the Swiss Cottage baths in the borough of Camden, and that people who want to take their children to one o'clock


clubs go to Parliament Hill fields, also in the borough of Camden? It is all very well for Conservative-controlled authorities to keep spending down, but their residents must use the facilities in neighbouring Labour-run boroughs because they are not provided in their own boroughs.

Mr. Hunt: With a Conservative council, one gets not only a lower community charge but better value for money and better services.

Mr. Yeo: Does my hon. Friend agree that, had we not changed the domestic rating system, the spending by the authorities that he mentioned would have given rise to such a huge burden on ratepayers that any Government who failed to get rid of rates would have been rightly and severely criticised?

Mr. Hunt: I totally agree with my hon. Friend. The Government were the first with the guts to get rid a the iniquitous domestic rating system. We still await the Labour party's statistics for what it proposes in place of the community charge.

Broadcasting Bill

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan) submitted on 14 March that the Broadcasting Bill, as amended in Standing Committee, is hybrid. The Bill has now been reported by the Committee and I am grateful for the opportunity which I have had to study the hon. Member's points.
The first point put forward was to the effect that clause 164 and schedule 14, as amended, require providers of broadcasting services to make available for general publication information relating to programmes, to the disadvantage specifically of the owners and publishers of TV Times and Radio Times.
As the hon. Member for Paisley, South said in my predecessor's words, a hybrid Bill
is a public bill which affects a particular private interest in a manner different from the private interest of other persons or bodies of the same category or class."—[Official Report, 14 March 1990; Vol. 169, c. 487.]
I have studied clause 164 and schedule 14 with the greatest care. I am satisfied that it creates a class of "providers of programme services" and treats them all precisely the same way in the matter of the copyright of information about their programmes. Since there is no question of different treatment for different providers of services, the clause and schedule cannot make the Bill hybrid.
The hon. Member for Paisley, South also drew attention to the distinction between the provision for domestic satellite services and non-domestic satellite services. He will be aware that the Bill is drafted with separate definitions in clause 38 of these two classes of provider.
The hon. Member for Paisley, South referred specifically to Sky Television, but I am satisfied that it is not the case that Sky Television will necessarily, or in fact, be the only provider of a non-domestic satellite service. Here again, clause 38, as drafted, creates legitimate classes and I cannot therefore rule the Bill to be hybrid in this regard either.

Mr. Norman Buchan: I thank you, Mr. Speaker, for the careful attention that you have paid to this matter. I completely accept your definition, analysis and statement. However, it creates a major problem because, regardless of the creation of a group, it still leaves the Rupert Murdoch News International holding in Sky as an isolated exception to the restrictions on holdings imposed by the Bill. For example, he owns 35 per cent. of the daily press and, for any other reason, would have been brought under the conditions to prevent monopoly control of a television station.
This was a genuine and serious issue and we shall have to pursue it in other forms. I hope that the Government will take on board the fact that a monopoly of exception has been created and that steps will be taken on Report to rectify this difficult and dangerous issue of cross-media ownership, which was expressly said in the White Paper to be excluded.

Points of Order

Mr. Peter Rost: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. A motion on the community charge appears on the Order Paper in the name of the Leader of the Opposition for debate today. In line 4, the House is invited to deplore the allegedly "partisan way in which" community capping has been applied. As the authorities that have been capped have been granted leave for judicial review by the courts, may I invite you, Mr. Speaker, in view of the long-established conventions about the sub judice rule in the House, to deliberate and, if necessary, to rule on whether it is appropriate for the House to debate the partisan way in which it has been drafted and whether the motion is in order?

Mr. Speaker: This matter was raised with me yesterday just after questions. The case has not yet been set down and the matter is not yet sub judice.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether you have received any request from the Chancellor of the Exchequer or any of the finance Ministers to make a statement today about the disastrous trade deficit figure of £2·2 billion, which is more than 50 per cent. higher than the amount expected by the Government and City sources? You will recall that, on a number of occasions when the figures have been announced, the Chancellor or one of his deputies has come to the House and been questioned. Someone must stop the run on the pound—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I have received no such request.

Mr. Skinner: You should have.

Mr. Speaker: Order. Perhaps I should have, but I have not.

Mr. Barry Field: I should like to raise a point of order, of which I have given you notice, Mr. Speaker. We have learnt that the Liberal county council on the Isle of Wight is one of the top 10 overspending councils in the country, that the Liberal local income tax would be more than £900 per taxpayer, and that the Labour party has admitted that it would not replace the community charge for at least two years, so it is clear that the community charge is here to stay.
The local Labour party is advertising a petition that is to be presented to me. I believe that, as community charge officers can use any source of information, hon. Members would be obliged if you would rule, Sir, on whether such a petition would be subject to parliamentary privilege.
Many Members of Parliament come to the Isle of Wight, even retired Members, from the other parties. Some of them have pledged that they will not pay the community charge. I would not want to be put in the invidious position where a community charge officer could demand that he see the petition and discover that Labour Members of Parliament on the Isle of Wight had signed it and refused to pay the community charge. In that circumstance, my constituents might feel that I had been less than even-handed in my treatment of the petition.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member gave me notice of his point of order. I judge the matter to be hypothetical at the moment. I do not know what sort of petition it will be, but


if it is a petition to the House, once it has been presented it is in the possession of the House and will not be available for inspection by non-Members.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Further to the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan), Mr. Speaker. I am not questioning your ruling. However, the Broadcasting Bill will give a privileged position to Rupert Murdoch and Sky Television. As I understand it, your argument is that the Bill's provisions would apply to all people in the same position. However, the cost of setting up satellite television is so high that, in effect, Rupert Murdoch is in a privileged position. Given that fact and the representations that have been made, and accepting your non-hybridity ruling, I ask you seriously to consider the amendments that are tabled on this issue and to give them preference in the selection process.

Mr. Speaker: I shall certainly give careful consideration to that point. However, I must first see the amendments on this subject after they have been tabled.

Mr. Bill Michie: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you well know, I rarely raise points of order, but I have been driven to do so, mainly because of planted Question 14, which allowed the rag, tag and bobtails on the Conservative Back Benches to do their pantomime act of saying, "Labour, Labour, Labour." My local authority was named and we do not have the opportunity to challenge the Minister's figures or claims. People should bear in mind that some houses are empty because of Government grants for refurbishment, and so on. Why cannot we have the right to reply?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member has the right. If he seeks to take part in today's debate, he will be able to do just that. We have a busy day ahead of us, but I will take Mr. Gow.

Mr. Ian Gow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you reconsider the ruling that you gave a moment ago in response to the point of order of my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Mr. Rost)? The House is aware that yesterday an application was made to the High Court by certain county councils which have been capped

and that yesterday the High Court gave permission for a judicial review to proceed. In those circumstances, and as the proceedings have been begun and upheld in the preliminary stage, is not the matter sub judice, whether or not that affects what will happen?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is a distinguished lawyer. I am not a lawyer, but I have looked into the matter with particular and special care to make certain that I have got it right. I am satisfied that the case has not yet been set down and that, therefore, is not sub judice.

Mr. Roger King: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have read carefully the motion for debate this afternoon presented by Her Majesty's Opposition. Of course, we are all aware that it is an important debate. Having read the motion, I wonder whether the whole motion appears on the Order Paper. I refer you to line 8, which says:
and bring forward a fairer system of local government finance so that … 
I believe that there may be a line or two missing after that because the motion makes no reference to what type of fairer local government taxation the Opposition propose. It makes no reference to a roof tax or local income tax. One would have thought that an Opposition motion would have mentioned that. Will you confirm that the full motion appears on the Order Paper; or has an error been made by the printers?

Mr. Speaker: No error has been made. We had better get on with the debate because we may hear about that very matter.

BILL PRESENTED

AUSTRALIAN CONSTITUTION (PUBLIC RECORD COPY)

Mr. Attorney-General, supported by Sir Geoffrey Howe, Mr. Secretary Hurd, Mr. Secretary Waddington and Mr. Solicitor-General, presented a Bill to exclude one of the record copies of the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1990 from the public records to which the Public Records Act 1958 applies: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 132.]

Interdicts and Injunctions (Amendment)

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Fair Trading Act 1973 to allow the courts further powers of interdict and injunction to prevent purchasers of assets of firms which are the subject of a potential enquiry by the Office of Fair Trading or the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from pre-empting possible decisions of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry arising from recommendations of the Commission.
In moving this ten-minute Bill on the seemingly dry subject of interdicts and injunctions in the name of my parliamentary colleagues who are members of the Amalgamated Engineering Union group, may I say that, although the matter seems as dry as dust, it concerns the industrial base of our country and jobs.
The Atlas steel foundry in Armadale in west Lothian supplied the high integrity steel from which many of the Dreadnoughts were made. I am grateful for the presence not only of my senior colleagues and my party leader but of that of the Leader of the House. In Westminster Abbey today he may have been thinking about the ships at Gallipoli. The heavy steel for those ships was probably forged, if they were Clyde-built, in the Atlas steel works in Armadale. The steel foundry is unique in that it has extremely heavy cranes and kilns/furnaces which are not found anywhere else in Britain. If certain work—not all of it—were not done in Armadale, it would have to be done at Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Linz in Austria, by Thyssen at Gelsenkirchen in Germany or, arguably, in Turin. We are dealing with a unique facility.
William Cook plc of Penistone acquired that foundry. I hasten to add that in this Bill I seek to criticise no one, least of all William Cook. It acquired the foundry and, according to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Central (Mr. Caborn), Andrew Cook is a go-ahead and progressive force in industry. However, it bought the foundry in order to close it and take away certain key assets. I referred the matter to the Office of Fair Trading, which has taken the case seriously and, for three weeks, has been working hard on it, with the possibility of referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
However, the nub of the issue, which forms the genesis of my Bill, was that when it became clear that the Office of Fair Trading was looking seriously at the case, it seemed as if William Cook plc was taking away some of the key components of the electric furnace. That would present the Office of Fair Trading and, if a referral were to be made, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission with a fait accompli. Therefore, the Amalgamated Engineering Union decided to try to get an interdict or an injunction in the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
I am in no way criticising the court or the judge because he gave us a perfectly good hearing, but we could not prove our case because there was a geological flaw. We could not show, albeit that there were other bidders, that William Cook plc had done anything wrong in law. I do not think that I misrepresent the judge by saying of Lord Marnoch that when it came to the judgment his line was that he wished he could have helped, but he could not in law.

Mr. Bob Cryer: The law should be changed.

Mr. Dalyell: For that reason, as my hon. Friend says, I believe that we should consider introducing new laws or changing the law. This Bill is about giving the courts flexibility and discretion that they do not have at present so that they can say that people should wait and see, and prevent a fait accompli from being presented to other bidders in industry until the Office of Fair Trading and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission have had time to look at the matter. Such a problem could come to all of us.
I said that my ten-minute Bill would be succinct, and so it will be. I know from last Friday that such Bills often have a difficult passage in the House. Sometimes people speak for 90 minutes in order that a Bill should not be heard. On this occasion, I hope that if my ten-minute Bill, in that form, does not see the light of parliamentary day, at least my senior colleagues, the deputy Prime Minister, and those Conservative Members who have done me the courtesy of being present and of giving me a good hearing, will reflect that what happened to the steel foundry in Armadale could happen to them.
There is an understandable reason for giving the courts the discretion not to alter events in finality—that is a matter for different laws—but to say that the Office of Fair Trading and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission should not be presented with a fait accompli.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Tam Dalyell, the parliamentary group of the Amalgamated Engineering Union, Mr. Stanley Orme, Mr. Ken Eastham, Mr. Richard Caborn, Mr. David Clelland, Mr. Jimmy Dunnachie, Mr. John Evans, Mr. Ted Garrett, Mr. George Howarth, Mr. Robert Hughes, Mr. William McKelvey and Mr. Bill Michie.

INTERDICTS AND INJUNCTIONS (AMENDMENT)

Mr. Tam Dalyell accordingly presented a Bill to amend the Fair Trading Act 1973 to allow the courts further powers of interdict and injunction to prevent purchasers of assets of firms which are the subject of a potential enquiry by the Office of Fair Trading or the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from pre-empting possible decisions of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry arising from recommendations of the Commission: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 4 May and to be printed. [Bill 133.]

Mr. Richard Holt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, arising out of the presentation of the Bill by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). Is it in order for a group such as the Amalgamated Engineering Union parliamentary Labour group to be a sponsor of a Bill in the House, because it must surely include Members of the other place as well? Would not the Bill's list of sponsors have to have that group removed, or should not the names of the individuals in it be submitted?

Mr. Speaker: Only the names of the hon. Members that were given will go down on the Bill.

Mr. Holt: How do we know who they are?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) mentioned them.

Opposition Day

11TH ALLOTTED DAY

Local Government Finance

Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. In view of the large number of hon. Members who wish to participate in the debate, I propose to put a limit of 10 minutes on speeches between 6 pm and 8 pm and I would ask those who speak before and after that time broadly to bear that limit in mind.

Mr. Bryan Gould: I beg to move,
That this House condemns the unfair and excessive burden which the poll tax has imposed on many millions of people, regrets the further burdens placed on some local authorities and the communities they serve as a consequence of charge-capping and deplores the partisan way in which it has been applied; expresses concern at the heavy burden imposed on many enterprises, and particularly on small businesses, by the uniform business rate; and calls upon the Government as a matter of urgency to review the operation of the poll tax and the uniform business rate and bring forward a fairer system of local government finance so that individuals and their families, businesses and local authorities can all be relieved from the burdens they impose.
In common, I imagine, with most hon. Members, I have received thousands of letters about various aspects of the poll tax. Many of their writers have objected to the principle of the poll tax, some of them perhaps unconsciously echoing the criticism rather surprisingly made by Adam Smith, who is sometimes put forward as guru of the right. Many other letters have complained about the tax's unfair impact and others have asked about—indeed, complained about—the unworkability and the difficulty of administering the poll tax and the expense that has been involved in setting up the systems—in employing new staff, buying new software programmes and so on.
Other letters have expressed concern about the impact of the poll tax on the exercise of civil rights, because many people have noticed the increasing body of academic and other research that shows the worrying trend towards a substantial falling off in the numbers of those on the electoral register, and they are very worried that that is the consequence of the poll tax having inhibited people who fear that by exercising their right to vote they will somehow be caught for the purposes of paying the tax.
Still other writers—all these points are familiar, I am sure, to hon. Members on both sides of the House—have expressed concern about the pressure that the poll tax has put on family life: about their obligation to maintain an adult child or an elderly relative for whom there is suddenly a new responsibility.
Moreover—I believe that my experience is unlikely to be unique in this respect—the overriding question that has increasingly been asked by the great majority of those who have written is about why the poll tax bill is so high—[Interruption.]

Mr. Roger King: rose—

Mr. Gould: I shall give way in a moment.
Conservative Members who were making a fuss a moment ago will know, if they are honest with themselves and the House, that such inquiries have come with just as

great bewilderment—and, I dare say, greater outrage and anger—from people living in Conservative-controlled authorities as from those living in Labour or otherwise politically controlled authorities. They want to know why the bills that they were promised by the Daily Express in 1986 would be only £50 a head, which they were promised by the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) about a year ago would be about £178 a head, and which they were promised by the present Secretary of State would be only about £278 a head, have averaged £90 more than that most recent forecast and now average about £360.
The answer that they understand and accept, because it is the true answer, is that the bills are so much higher than forecast right across the country because the Government got their sums wrong. It is not just the Labour party which makes that point. It is made by independent bodies of all types such as the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and others. It is made by Tory-controlled local associations such as the Association of District Councils and the Association of County Councils. They say that the Government made a series of mistakes. First, they chose to assume that local government expenditure for the financial year just completed was £1·6 billion less than it actually was. They did that primarily by choosing to overlook the fact that many local authorities had to dip into their reserves to maintain their spending even at that level.
The bodies that I have mentioned noticed that the Government made no allowance in their calculations for the additional costs of collecting the poll tax or community charge. The Parliamentary Under-Secretary estimated those costs at £400 million, but most people believe that that is a substantial underestimate. The Government also chose to overlook the fact that local authorities have had to accept a range of new obligations and duties, many of them imposed by the Government. No allowance was made for those new obligations.
The Government made the ludicrous assumption that every authority would collect 100 per cent. of the poll tax that was due to it. I do not think that one borough or district treasurer in the country has budgeted on that basis, because everybody understands that the incidence of collection for the poll tax will be lower than it was for the rates. Therefore, the best or perhaps the most optimistic estimate for the collection rate is about 95 per cent. It might even be more prudent to budget for a 90 per cent. collection rate.
The most remarkable mistake was that the Government solemnly assured local authorities that the rate of inflation on the basis of which those authorities should prepare their budgets for the coming financial year, now the current financial year, was initially to be ·8 per cent. It has now been slightly revised upwards, but it is still nowhere near the true rate of inflation, which, as we all understand and deplore, is running at twice the Government's initial estimate.
The cumulative effect of that catalogue of mistakes has led the Secretary of State himself unconsciously to admit that a gap has arisen between the real level of local government spending and the level that the Government assumed in a fit of super-optimism would be the case. He complains about that gap and has assumed that it is about £3 billion.

Mr. John Maples: rose—

Mr. Gould: I am advancing a continuous argument and I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman when I have finished it.
The Secretary of State has said that he has put a figure of over £3 billion on that gap. The bad news for poll tax payers is that, because of the way in which local government finance is now structured, every pound of that gap, every penny of the deficit, now falls on the hapless poll tax payer. Every £1 by which the Government's estimate has fallen short of what is required by local government, means that an extra £4 will have to be found from the poll tax.
There is a charitable explanation for that sad catalogue of errors. It is that the Government are simply incompetent. On the day when a £2·2 billion trade deficit has been announced, that explanation has a certain persuasiveness. However, I do not think that this was simply a catalogue of errors. I think that the Government deliberately set about creating this shortfall for reasons which I shall shortly elaborate.

Mr. Maples: If, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, the Government got all this arithmetic so disastrously wrong, how did the Labour-controlled authority of Barking and Dagenham, which includes his constituency, manage to set its charge at just £2 over the Government's suggested figure? Is he saying that the Government were too generous with their grant for his council or is it uniquely efficient?

Mr. Gould: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman is making the case that the Government's errors were not uniform and comprehensive, but they nearly were. The experience of my borough gives the lie to the oft-repeated claim that the poll tax in Labour councils is always higher than in Tory councils.
Let me return to the thread of my argument. I had carried the House with me to the point where we had explored this catalogue of errors and I had suggested that simple incompetence was hardly an adequate explanation. I believe that the Government deliberately set out to create that shortfall because they wanted to build into the poll tax the unfairness, the high bills and the oppressive burdens that are now manifest. Why should they want to do that? [Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not want to listen, but they should hear the argument because it may help them to understand why they and their constituents are in such difficulties.
The real explanation is to be found in a close textual analysis of the claims that have so often been made for the poll tax. Let us reflect on the theory that underlies it and has so often been advanced as the major case for bringing it about. It was that local government was irresponsible, spent far too much and did so because it was not accountable to those who received the services. It was argued that, because everybody would pay it, the poll tax would improve the accountablility of local government.
It was only a small step from that to conclude that one way to make that accountability really bite and have an impact was to ensure that when people found that they had to pay the bills, those bills were substantial and hurt. The theory was that outraged poll tax payers would turn in anger and point the finger of accusation at their local authority and demand that the bills be reduced and services cut. The theory went further, because it was

assumed, against the evidence that we now have, that that charge, that action and that demand would be made most intensively against Labour local authorities.
That was the theory, and the game was given away by the previous Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury, who argued, when criticised about the unfairness of the poll tax, that it was criticised only by those who had been taught to believe that the rich should pay for the services provided to others. There we have the nub of the argument.
The problem with all that is that the accountability that was meant to do the Government's dirty work for them, which would enable them to walk away from local authority finances, saying that it was nothing to do with them, and which was meant to allow them to sit back while irate poll tax payers undermined and weakened local authorities, has backfired in the Government's face. The reason for that is that Conservative Members have been joined by Conservative councillors and activists all refusing to play the part written for them by Conservative central office. They refuse to accept that the fault lies with local authorities.

Mr. Bill Walker: If the hon. Gentleman's analysis is to be believed, how does he explain that in Scotland, in the second year of the community charge, 20 councils have kept their spending at last year's levels or below and the remainder are within the rate of inflation? Can he also explain why, today in Scotland, the Labour party has announced its proposals for its alternative to the community charge, which the hon. Gentleman has not yet endorsed? That does not surprise me, because it was not able to specify the different categories of homes and how they would be affected.

Mr. Gould: I shall gladly deal with Scotland later in my speech, when I shall invite the House to contemplate the rather mysterious meeting that was arranged between Strathclyde regional council and the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), whose specific purpose it was to consider amendments to the community charge. That was something of which the Secretary of State seemed to be unaware, and it shows how widespread is the anxiety within the Tory party about the poll tax as it has worked out.
The theory of accountability went wrong because many millions of people throughout the country were able to watch on their television screens Conservative councillors in West Oxfordshire resigning the Tory whip. They saw Conservative social clubs in Morecambe disaffiliating from the Tory party. They saw Conservative voters, Members and activists marching and protesting about the poll tax. So they knew that the Government's efforts to use accountability as a weapon against local authorities in general, and Labour local authorities in particular, would not hold water.
It is because of that growing realisation that we have had a succession of measures introduced almost day by day—for example, safety nets, transitional reliefs, changes to rebate schemes and new exemptions. These measures have been introduced by a Government who finally understand—I pay tribute to many Conservative Members for helping the Government to come to this realisation—that accountability has backfired in their face. The poll tax payer now holds the Government responsible for accountability.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Gould: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. King) because I feel that I have an inkling of what he wants to ask.

Mr. Roger King: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He is as generous as ever. I listened with keen attention to his remarks about the community seeking accountability from local authorities. According to him, that will not work. I draw the hon. Gentleman's attention to an article that appeared on the front page of the Birmingham Evening Mail last Friday. It was headed "Pasting for City Council". The council has been conducting MORI opinion polls over the last few years to ascertain the views of the local community on how well it has been performing. It seems that
some 73 per cent. of Brummies blame the Council for wasting too much money on non-essentials, foreign trips and parties. And 57 per cent. believe the council is remote, out of touch and impersonal.
That is a Labour council. What advice will the hon. Gentleman give electors in Birmingham on 3 May? They would be presented with a lower community charge by both the Conservative and the Liberal parties and they are faced with a £406 charge from the Labour party.

Mr. Gould: On 3 May, accountability will have its day. That is the accountability which the Secretary of State was unwilling to trust when he chose to charge cap 21 authorities with less than a month to pass before the voters had the opportunity to express their judgment.
If we are to exchange press comment on the performance of local authorities and local communities, I wonder whether the hon. Member for Northfield read the report in yesterday's Evening Standard under the headline "Poll Tax Disowned by Tories". The article refers to the campaigning of the Tory group in Bromley, a borough with a considerable history in the annals of Tory politicking. In its leaflets and electioneering material the Tory group states:
The community charge was introduced by central Government, not by Bromley councillors. Whatever your views on the current performance of central government, the forthcoming elections are about local government.

Mr. Roger King: rose—

Mr. Gould: No, I shall not give way. I have another press clipping about the state of public opinion.
I refer to the poll which was published in The Independent today. I mention that only in passing, but it shows the 26-point lead that the Labour party has over the Conservative party. The most significant feature of the poll is that 55 per cent. of that large and growing band of people who are described as Tory defectors gave the poll tax as their reason for ceasing to support the Tories. When asked what they thought of the various options, only one in seven of the dwindling band of Tory supporters said that the poll tax was their preferred method of financing local government.
I intend to pursue the theme of accountability because so much was made of it putting the case for the poll tax. Yet as I have just mentioned, when all else had failed, when all the subterfuges and diversions and little escape routes had been tried and had failed to assuage concern, at last the Secretary of State felt obliged to concede that accountability had gone out of the window; that it was no longer the name of the game. On 3 April, just a month

from the opportunity that millions of voters would have to express their views in the ballot box on the size of their poll tax bills, the Government had to intervene to sweep away accountability and to introduce charge capping—

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: rose—

Mr. Gould: I shall not give way, as I want to make the point that the Secretary of State had to introduce charge capping for local authorities.
Heaven knows how much midnight oil was burnt and how many hours of effort were put in by civil servants to produce the mathematical miracle of 20, rising to 21, local authorities that excluded every Tory authority. The amazing aspect is that the Secretary of State managed to produce a list that included local authorities whose poll tax bills were actually below the Government's assumed charge for those authorities. He managed to produce a list that included authorities that were contributors under the safety net. However, the list excluded some authorities that would appear on any list based on those with the highest poll tax bills. The right hon. Gentleman managed to produce a list that excluded Tory authorities that would have been included on any list of authorities that had most sharply increased their spending over last year. He even managed to produce a list that excluded Kensington and Chelsea.
I shall let the House into a secret. We did quite a bit of work chopping and changing the various criteria that the right hon. Gentleman might use—yet we found it virtually impossible to come up with a combination that would exclude Kensington and Chelsea. However, the Secretary of State has found a way to do that. The conclusion reached by the hundreds of people in Tory authorities who have written to us is that that list was a political fix. It was a political exercise—a concession to the fact that accountability could no longer be relied upon. All that was left to the Government was to try to shift the blame for the fiasco on their hands.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in order to cap Kensington and Chelsea I would have had to cap 58 local authorities? Is it the Labour party's position that I should have capped 58 local authorities?

Mr. Gould: I do the Secretary of State the honour of assuming that he knows his way around his own criteria a little better than he has just suggested. The fact is that under almost all combinations of criteria, Kensington and Chelsea figures high on the list. Indeed, on the combination of criteria that most people assumed that the right hon. Gentleman would use, Kensington and Chelsea came 21st. That is why many people assumed that he would produce a list of just 20, which he did.
Even the Secretary of State understood that, had he produced a list based on criteria that produced 20 local authorities excluding every Conservative authority, hut with that same set of criteria producing a Tory 21st local authority, it would be extremely embarrassing to draw the line just before that Tory authority appeared on the list.
Charge capping is a political exercise which is unlikely to succeed. I set aside the question of judicial review. I am delighted that a High Court judge has agreed that t here is a case to answer, and I shall be interested to see how that legal argument pans out. Even as a political exercise,


capping is unlikely to succeed because it necessarily destroys the only case that was ever really made for poll tax—that it would increase accountability.
I suspect that many Conservative Members are uncomfortably aware that capping has immeasurably increased the anger of poll tax payers in Tory local authorities. They are the people who write in to complain, "How dare the Secretary of State draw up a list that excludes my Tory-controlled borough, which has imposed a whacking great poll tax bill on me?"
Contrary to the Secretary of State's efforts and expectations, charge capping has made the Government even more directly responsible for poll tax bills. Every aspect of local government finance—central Government grant, uniform business rate, and now the poll tax itself—comes under central Government control. In effect, charge-capped bills are those which have been issued by the Government under their own authority, and the remainder are, by implication, bills which the Government say can go ahead. Every poll tax bill that has arrived and is about to arrive bears only one set of fingerprints—the fingerprints of a guilty Government.

Mr. Ian Bruce: As the hon. Member for Dangenham (Mr. Gould) worries about the poor and needy, who have great difficulty paying the community charge, what advice does he offer the Labour-controlled local authority serving Weymouth and Portland? Putting aside the cost of the community charge, that authority has, according to the old system, imposed an increase in money collected from all sources of 50 per cent. How would Labour deal with that situation? That authority is not being capped because its budget has risen only from £4 million to £6·5 million, but clearly that increase is costing my constituents a lot of money.

Mr. Gould: The invented figure of a 35 per cent. rates increase that the Secretary of State has used sometimes is just as much vitiated as the poll tax calculation by the mistakes that I enumerated earlier, in terms of providing central Government grant. That is the major explanation. The hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Bruce) ought to advise his constituents to pursue the matter with the Government, because they are responsible for the gap and for the supposed rates increase.
So much for accountability as a feature of the poll tax. Turning to the uniform business rate, we immediately encounter a paradox. The uniform business rate is in many respects the stablemate of the poll tax, yet whereas we were told that the poll tax had the major virtue of increasing accountability, somehow and mysteriously there is no mention of accountability in relation to the uniform business rate. Not only does it entirely overlook accountability but it totally denies it. It provides instead for a centrally-fixed national rate which breaks the link between local authorities and their local business communities.
The reason why the Secretary of State's business community is so worried about the uniform rate is that it offers no opportunity to respond to revaluation—which we welcome—by giving local authorities the power to fix their business rate according to local conditions. Conservative Members know as well as anyone how

poorly the uniform rate is regarded. I would take a bet that every one of them has received representations from local business men to that effect.
The ability to meet the needs of local business communities has been taken from local government and is now entirely in the hands of central Government. That is why, when the Secretary of State encounters opposition from his business community through the organisation called Business Against Rate and Rent Increases in Bath—the most high profile of the growing number of protests up and down the country—and when he promises to see them but is reported as saying that he will do so only as a constituency Member of Parliament, he was profoundly wrong. The business community was right to ask to see him as the Secretary of State for the Environment, because he and the Government have introduced the uniform business rate, and have imposed it on business men up and down the country. There is no point in speaking to the local constituency Member of Parliament, because the uniform business rate is central Government policy.

Mr. David Nicholson: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the UBR in my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State would, on former values, have involved a lower rate bill than the rates exacted by Somerset and Avon county councils? Does he agree that the rise in the business rates bill in my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend was caused by the revaluation, which was delayed for 17 years? What is the Labour party's position on revaluation? Would it cancel it, or would it postpone it, or would it go for an entirely different system of business taxation for which there is no consensus among industrial and business organisations?

Mr. Gould: As some of the more attentive hon. Members may recall—I am sure that the Secretary of State does, because he referred to it this afternoon—I have had no hesitation in supporting and endorsing the revaluation. Where the Labour party parts company with the Government is that they have built on and exacerbated the revaluation with a national rate which takes no account of local conditions. The hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. Nicholson) is wrong. If the business rate could be set by local authorities, it could be made to offset the impact of revaluation.

Mr. Chris Patten: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman misunderstands the point. In my constituency and in many others the uniform business rate is 10 per cent. lower than the local non-domestic rate, so how does that square with his argument?

Mr. Gould: I shall leave it to the Secretary of State to make his case to his recalcitrant business communities. That is his problem.
May I also bring to the right hon. Gentleman's attention the real problems that local business men face. As the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out, a large proportion of businesses will face an increase in their business rates. That increase will be particularly felt in the south-east, among small businesses, in retailing and in small high-tech businesses. Those businesses are offered—

Mr. Tony Favell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould: No, let me continue for the moment. Those businesses are offered, as protection against the increases, a transitional scheme which, true to form and typically of the whole poll tax fiasco, is less generous than it seems.
The principle is that most ordinary and large businesses will be no more than 20 per cent. worse off in each of the next five years. The truth is that that 20 per cent. increase per year—said to be the upper limit for any increase—is a cumulative increase which takes no account of inflation. In reality, even with a 6 per cent. inflation rate, that transitional relief will be exhausted after three years.
Any business that changes its premises, moves to new premises, leaves premises empty, refurbishes, makes additions or makes any alteration to premises will lose the transitional relief immediately. That is why one will find a range of shop fronts boarded up in high streets in so many of our towns and cities; they will be unlettable. Anyone who took on those premises would immediately cop the full increase in uniform business rate, and that is what is proving so damaging to so many business communities.
I hope that the Secretary of State will tell us what explanation he gives his own business community on the subject and that he will bring us up to date on the Government's proposals for mitigating the worst effects of the poll tax. Decisions are needed soon. We cannot afford delay for much longer if local authorities are to be able to gear up for whatever changes the Government have in store. We need to know which of the options that have been floated in recent months the Government intend to settle on.
Are we to have—I shall give way to the Secretary of State on this point, although I suspect that he wishes to deal with it in his speech—the removal from local government expenditure of major items of expenditure, such as education or teachers' salaries? I think not, because the Prime Minister has made it clear that she is opposed to it. Are we, then, to have the restoration of central Government grant to make good—

Mr. Favell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould: No, I do not intend to give way for the moment. I should be grateful if, for a change, the hon. Gentleman would listen.
Are we to have the restoration of that £3 billion deficit in central Government grant? I think not—although it must be an attractive option—because it would put the Government in desperate straits in terms of their finances. How would they find that £3 billion—and probably more—to make good the gap without disappointing their followers' expectations that they might be able to offer yet more mysterious and insubstantial tax cuts in the run-up to the general election? How would the Secretary of State guarantee that an increase in grant would result in lower poll tax bills? Is not it likely that local authorities, which have been bled dry and have had to cut their services in the most painful and damaging fashion, would use any additional grant to restore their services, thus leaving poll tax bills unchanged? Are we, therefore, to have, as I think has also been floated, a universal form of charge capping? Is that what is in store? That would be the final admission that accountability is off the agenda.
Perhaps there is to be the banding of incomes—sometimes called the Mates option. The Secretary of State knows well, because he voted it down, that that is full of

practical problems and that it would create all sorts of poverty trap implications. Furthermore, it denies the original purpose of the poll tax.

Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould: No, I do not intend to give way again. I am about to end my speech.
Always, of course, lurking in the wings is the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). Earlier this afternoon we heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) that the right hon. Member for Henley had carefully distanced himself from any responsibility for introducing this iniquitous tax. The point is that we do not yet know from the Government, although local authorities desperately need to know, what is their solution to the problem. They are aware of the problems. There is an excellent amendment on the Order Paper in the name of the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). If the rules of order permitted it, Mr. Speaker, I would say immediately that we accept it and that we invite the right hon. Gentleman to join us in the Lobby. We also know, as hon. Members heard from my quotation of the case of—

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I distinctly heard the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) say that he did not intend to give way again.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: rose——

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Dagenham has given way generously. Interventions take up a lot of time. Many hon. Members, possibly including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark), wish to participate in the debate.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your advice on the motion that stands in the name of the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould). It refers to a fairer system of local government finance. We have heard nothing about that during his speech. Does the hon. Gentleman intend to speak to his own motion?

Mr. Speaker: I do not know, but what I do know is that if he is interrupted again we may never get there.

Mr. Gould: In order to show how generous I am, and out of my regard for the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark), I shall give way to him as a last gesture.

Mr. Beaumont-Dark: Will my hon. Friend—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] That was said on purpose. In this House one can have friends across party lines. I agree with the Opposition that the policy put forward by my own right hon. and hon. Friends is somewhat less than satisfactory. That is at its kindest. I believe that the way in which the community charge will fall is unsatisfactory and unjust and that the way in which the uniform business rate will affect small businesses in particular is neither fair nor just.
Does the hon. Gentleman accept, however, that we are talking about vast billions of pounds that have to be found for local government expenditure? Although I think that my right hon. Friends are wrong, because the community charge does not take into account ability to pay, that


money will have to be found, whatever the Opposition say. How are they going to find such sums? What sort of policy will they put forward, because, in the end, the money will have to come from somewhere?

Mr. Gould: I am glad to carry the hon. Gentleman with me to some degree at least, in that he joins us in the criticisms which the vast majority of people make of the Government's proposals. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] I am coming to the answer which hon. Members will find extremely useful.
The Government well understand—at least, they have no excuse for not understanding—that the time has come for them to recognise the fiasco that they have created. I have referred to the efforts that Tory local authorities and councillors are making to distance themselves from central Government. I have also referred to the poll in The Independent,which shows how much the poll tax is damaging Tory prospects in the local government elections. I have referred to the amendment tabled in the names of the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North and some of his hon. Friends as just the tip of an iceberg which demonstrates how much concern and anxiety exists on Conservative Benches. I have also drawn attention to the meeting—we look forward to hearing an explanation of that meeting—which mysteriously has been organised between senior officials of Strathclyde regional council and the right hon. Member for Ayr. All those factors demonstrate how much difficulty the Government are in.
For the sake of all those who want to live in a fairy-tale land where people do not understand what our Labour replacement for the poll tax will be, let me read from the report in The Independent. When people were asked what alternatives to the poll tax they favoured, Labour's system of taking income and property values into account was the most popular—[Interruption.]Unlike those Conservative Members who are or pretend to be ignorant, 43 per cent.—[ Interruption.] I repeat for those who did not catch that figure that 43 per cent. not only understood and were familiar with Labour's alternative, but actually found it preferable to any other proposition. The next most popular alternative was a return to the rates, which was favoured by 17 per cent. A local income tax, which is favoured by the Liberal Democrats, was preferred by only 16 per cent. and surprisingly, only one in seven of that dwindling band of Tory voters—those who intend to vote Tory in the local elections—favoured the poll tax
Let me quote from The Independent. [Interruption.]

Mr. Robert Key: Ssh.

Mr. Gould: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key): I think that he will enjoy this. The article states:
Even among the fairly small sample of intending Conservative voters, Labour's approach is preferred to any other".
We have now reached a point at which even the Government must understand—

Mr. Jim Sillars: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould: No, I will not.
Even the Government must understand that the game is up. Even they must now understand that the time for political posturing is over; that what is now required is a recognition that the Government—

Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. We have just been told that 43 per cent. of people understand the new Labour tax proposals. If that is the case, will the hon. Gentleman please explain them to the House?

Mr. Gould: If the hon. Gentleman had had enough wit and attention to listen to what I said, he would have clearly understood the Labour alternative.

Mr. John Ward: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You may not be aware that we have been trying to hear the debate for some time. So that we can understand what the hon. Gentleman is talking about, could a copy of the Labour party's policy document be placed in the Library?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): If the hon. Gentleman wishes to listen to the debate, perhaps he and his colleagues should restrain themselves. I, too, am anxious to hear what the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) has to say.

Mr. Sillars: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Gould: No.
I wish to help the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Ward). First, I shall send him a text of the major speech that I delivered in Cardiff in February; secondly, I shall send him a copy of the statement on which we based a press conference in the Mid-Staffordshire by-election on our alternative proposal; thirdly, I shall send him a copy of the briefing that we have sent to hundreds of thousands of people, which no doubt goes some way to explain why 43 per cent. of people prefer our alternative.

Mr. Roger King: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not it customary for Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen on matters of some importance to tell the House their policy, rather than hiding behind—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the debate will not be interrupted by a series of bogus points of order. Equally, I hope that the hon. Member for Dagenham will be given the opportunity to express himself to the House.

Mr. Gould: I am in a generous mood. I made an offer to the hon. Member for Poole, who intervened on an earlier bogus point of order. I shall also make a bargain with the Secretary of State: I shall send him copies of the same documents as soon as he sends us a copy of his statement on the Tory alternatives to the poll tax. That is the question to which people faced with horrific bills desperately need an answer. That is not in the interests of the Tory party, although we well understand why the Tories are running scared; people who are terrified out of their wits need to know the answers. We need to hear those answers from the Secretary of State now.

Mr. Bill Walker: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not this a United Kingdom debate on local government finance, on a motion on the Order Paper tabled in the names of Opposition Members? Earlier today, a statement was made in Scotland to which I referred in an intervention in the speech of the hon.


Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould)—you were not here, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for a local government debate of such magnitude, especially as it affects Scotland—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Chair will judge whether contributions to the debate are in order at the time that they are made and in the light of the wording of the motion. I hope that we can now get on.

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
`believes that almost every adult should make some contribution towards the cost of local services from which they benefit, with relief for the less well off; welcomes the embodiment of those principles in the community charge; notes that the scale and pattern of payments is related to ability to pay with 10 million people receiving rebates at a cost of £2·5 billion; welcomes the willingness of the Government to listen to constructive suggestions for improving the new system with a view to prompt implementation of any necessary changes; further notes that living under Labour costs people more; and deplores the fact that the Labour Party have not had the courage or honesty to come forward with their own proposals before the local elections on 3rd May.'

Mr. Sillars: The Secretary of State will know that I am extremely grateful to him for giving way. The Government amendment accuses the Labour party of not producing the goods in respect of the roof tax. Is he aware that the reason why the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) was afraid to give way to me—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Oh, yes. It is usual for an hon. Member to give way across the Chamber, not just to hon. Members on his side. He was afraid to give way to me because the Labour party in Scotland today produced figures for the roof tax. The average figure that it gave per household is £420, whereas two years ago under the rating system the average per household was £498. Will the Secretary of State, on my behalf, ask the hon. Member for Dagenham how it is possible to reach a figure of £420 per household, unless the Labour party is prepared to cut services massively in Scotland?

Mr. Patten: I will answer the hon. Gentleman's question straight away. I am sorry that, doubtless because of an oversight, the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) was unable to do so.
The only question people were not asked in the hon. Gentleman's moving peroration was whether they believe that there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. Had they been, doubtless the fairies could have produced the statistical information to which the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) drew attention.
I am sure that hon. Members have looked forward to this debate. It is no secret that, on balance, the Opposition have opposed the community charge. However, they have been a little reluctant to give their alternative. They have had 12 Opposition days this year but have not chosen to use one to discuss the community charge. We assumed when the Labour party tabled the motion—the Leader of the Opposition graced us with his presence for a few moments, although he had some difficulty staying awake—that the Mandelson veto had been lifted and that we would hear its alternative to domestic rates and the

community charge. Given hon. Members' high expectations, the speech of the hon. Member for Dagenham was a disappointment. My hon. Friends were only too eager to hear what he had to say and they will read his speech with interest to discover what the 43 per cent. believe in.
Once again, the hon. Member for Dagenham came to the Dispatch Box empty-handed. I should like to deal later with some of the points he made, but may I start with the position today? We have introduced the community charge on the basis of the revenue support grant settlement announced last July which allowed for an 8·5 per cent. increase in aggregate external finance for local government. We distributed that grant under the new formula, the standard spending assessment. Since last autumn, my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities—I pay tribute to his work over the past few months—and I have introduced the transitional relief scheme and have announced that contributions to the safety net will end after the first year instead of continuing for four years. In his Budget statement, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced the doubling of the ceiling on capital disregards.
Whatever our political disagreements, and although there are exceptions to which my hon. Friend the Minister referred earlier, by and large, the administrative arrangements for this extremely complicated new way of raising—[Interruption.] The administrative arrangements in local government have worked pretty well. I congratulate the majority of local authorities on issuing bills in early April, net of transitional relief and benefit, despite the late introduction of the transitional relief scheme. All the local authority officials who worked so hard to secure that outcome are to be congratulated.
This is one of the biggest changes that has been made to our social and economic life for decades. I can say, with perhaps more personal authority and witness than any other hon. Member that it has not been an entirely hazard-free enterprise, but nor would have been a revaluation of domestic rates or the introduction of whatever the Labour party would put in place of domestic rates and the community charge. If it were easy, straightforward and popular, it is conceivable that the Labour party would have announced its proposals.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: Does the Secretary of State accept that, in year two of the poll tax, the parliamentary banter seems out of place? May I say, with all sincerity, that for constituency Members of Parliament year two is sheer misery? If it has worked out so well, why is Lothian authority being asked to provide self-defence courses—I banter not and I do not exaggerate—for employees who must administer the tax? It is far from a laughing, yah-boo matter.

Mr. Patten: I wish that I had waited a moment or two before giving way to the hon. Gentleman, because there is something to which I wish to refer now and a little later. It is not surprising that, as we have introduced this substantial change, we have encountered several problems, anomalies and difficulties, such as the treatment of holiday caravans, which was referred to in a parliamentary statement by my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities, as well as the larger difficulties to which I referred delicately a moment or two ago.
We have made it clear that we intend to look at fresh evidence on the standard spending assessments, whether it be from local authority associations or individual authorities before the grant distribution next year. Several other issues have been brought to my attention by my hon. Friends. A range of constructive criticisms has been made by them and by others. It perhaps will not surprise the most distinguished of my right hon. and hon. Friends that not all the criticisms and proposals that we have received have been mutually compatible, but I dare say that that is in the nature of the argument.
We shall review all those issues in the next few weeks. Of course, it is important that, by the time we make the rate support grant settlement statement for next year, in a few months' time, we should have resolved all those matters and be able to say whether we need to make any modifications and, if so, what they should be. The basic principle remains the same: almost everyone should make some contribution to the cost of the services from which all people benefit.

Mr. Gould: I assure the Secretary of State that Labour Members are listening carefully to his comments, because the nature of the language that he uses shows that he offers substantial change. The right hon. Gentleman concedes fairly, as he has done before, that the standard spending assessments are somewhat less than perfect. Can we therefore conclude that he may be disposed not to contest the application for judicial review by those charge-capped authorities?

Mr. Patten: That was an ingenious way of asking a question—suggesting that I had made a statement that I had not made. Distinguished lawyer though the hon. Gentleman is, he would have been surprised had I given him such an answer, which he would have been able to send to his and others' learned Friends elsewhere. I said that we were prepared to consider fresh evidence on the SSAs, whether from individual authorities or from local authority associations. I have already made that clear in the House and I make it clear again. I do not think that it can be said that we are groaning under the weight of fresh evidence from local authority associations or local authorities, but we are prepared to listen to what people say.

Mr. Peter Hardy: Does the Secretary of State accept that it would have been highly desirable for those south Yorkshire authorities such as Rotherham which have real difficulties and relatively low spending assessments to have their position examined before he made his poll tax-capping announcement? Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that it is unreasonable and unacceptable—I made this clear in an early-day motion tabled this week—that an authority such as Rotherham should receive as a standard spending grant a sum 459 per cent. lower than that for the city of Westminster, which is much more affluent?

Mr. Patten: No. I believe that the grant distribution formula that we used was right. Whatever the hon. Gentleman thinks about the SSA formula, the proposed Rotherham budget was 15·4 per cent. above the resealed grant-related expenditure assessment—the previous distribution formula. It would not be fair to argue that

somehow everything had gone wrong because of a new SSA rather than the GRE. I repeat that we believe that the formula was right, but we are prepared to consider fresh evidence on it.

Mr. Richard Tracey: I am sure that my right hon. Friend agrees that next week the electors in London and elsewhere should know on what basis they should compare local authorities. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that they should compare on the basis of community charge payments? My right hon. Friend will recall that, at the launch of the Labour party's local government campaign, the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said that it would be at least two years after a Labour Government being returned—an unlikely prospect—before they would come forward with an alternative to the community charge. Does not that mean that people going to the polls next week will know that the community charge will be in place for at least four years and that they must judge that Conservative councils cost less?

Mr. Patten: Conservative councils certainly cost less. My hon. Friend did not refer to the figures, but the standard spending assessments in London, for example, show that Labour authorities are spending £216 and Conservative boroughs £3 a head above their SSAs—a difference of £213. That is a substantial reason for everyone in London voting Conservative next Thursday.

Mr. Martin Redmond: rose—

Mr. Kevin Barron: rose—

Mr. Patten: I shall give way and then make progress.

Mr. Redmond: The right hon. Gentleman said that the SSAs would be reviewed. Is he prepared to move the 30 April deadline for the authorities that are poll-capped and select a new date? He will be aware of the difficulty that people have had in trying to arrange a meeting with him to discuss this subject.

Mr. Patten: I cannot move that deadline, but I am prepared—as I must be in relation to my statutory obligations and requirements—to consider carefully an alternative budget, should one be put forward by a local authority. If I reject that budget, I must explain to the House of Commons why I have done so and get its support.

Mr. David Blunkett: rose—

Mr. Patten: Perhaps I could give way first to the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron). [HON. MEMBERS: "Give way."] All right—I give way to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett).

Mr. Blunkett: I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) will forgive me. In 1985, the Secretary of State for the Environment was faced with the same dilemma, in terms of local authorities having to present their cases quickly for redetermination and asking for additional time to be granted. It was felt at that time that the Secretary of State had the discretion to allow that. I ask the present Secretary of State to reconsider his answer with a view to allowing those authorities some limited additional time to consider their position.

Mr. Patten: I am not prepared to reconsider the position. As I said, if local authorities contest the caps or budgets that I have proposed, they have a statutory right to propose alternatives, and I then have to consider those alternatives and explain to the House why I either reject them or accept them. That is the right way to proceed and the way in which I intend to proceed.

Mr. Barron: rose—

Mr. Marlow: rose—

Mr. Patten: One last point and then perhaps I can make a little progress. The hon. Member for Rother Valley has been trying to intervene.

Mr. Barron: My constituency is in Rotherham metropolitan borough. For the first time under this Government it has been capped, and all its public expenditure will come in future from central Government. How will the accountability test apply next Thursday in the Rother Valley constituency, which has to suffer a share of the £7·9 million in cuts, yet four of the seven wards are not fielding Tory candidates?

Mr. Patten: I do not mean to make my point in a polemical or rhetorical way, but I have great difficulty understanding the hon. Gentleman's argument.

Mr. Barron: The Secretary of State echoed the words used in 1986 by the Conservative spokesman, now the Conservative party chairman, who said that people who believed that the poll tax was set too high had the right to go to the ballot box and to get rid of the councillors who set it. There are no Conservative candidates in 11 Rotherham seats. The Conservatives are denying their people a chance to vote and going against the accountability which was laid down in the legislation on Second Reading and which was supported by many Conservative Members.

Mr. Patten: It is true that the best way of capping overspending and excessive charges in the long term is by voting Conservative. I very much hope that people throughout the country will take advantage of that where they can.

Mr. Marlow: For even greater clarity, will my right hon. Friend expand on a point that he made a couple of minutes ago? I think that he said that in London the average Labour authority was spending £216 above SSA and the average Conservative borough a mere £3 above SSA. Does that mean that if the average Londoner votes Labour it will cost him or her £4 a week? If so, the House should know.

Mr. Patten: Yes, if they are lucky it will cost them that much extra a week. It will be perhaps £8 extra a week for a married couple. In several boroughs, some of which I have visited in the past few weeks, people would have considered themselves lucky if it had cost them only £4 a week extra.

Mr. Allen McKay: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Patten: I shall give way, but then I wish to make progress.

Mr. McKay: I wish to ask the Secretary of State a question on his statement about the spending assessments, which was fair enough. He is probably aware that my authority has been capped to the tune of £10 million.

Mr. James Hill: Good.

Mr. McKay: I heard the word "good". Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the decimation of the education system is good? I will tell him why he wishes the authority to be capped. It is because he knows nothing about it. When he says "good", he should realise what he is saving. What I am saying is serious.
Does the Secretary of State realise that in the short space of time that the £10 million of savings will have to be found the sum will become £13 million? Will he take that into consideration? We are now into the next financial year and by the time that savings or cuts can be made, we shall be part way through the year. The £10 million will become £13 million. Will he take that into consideration and the fact that we must put right the effects of Government policy?

Mr. Patten: We have taken that fact into consideration in setting our cap. We also notice that the cap still leaves a budget for Barnsley which is 17·7 per cent. or £118 per adult over the SSA.

Mr. Favell: The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) tried to put the fear of God up his constituents about the possibility of savings in the education department of his local authority. Is my right hon. Friend aware that it has just come to my knowledge that in Stockport it costs £400,000 a year to provide the wage packets?

Mr. Patten: Facts such as those and ways in which we could secure far greater value for money will emerge increasingly frequently as the discussion about the community charge and the best ways of funding local government finance becomes more intense.
Before giving way on several occasions, I said that we were prepared to consider in the next few months what changes and modifications may be required next year. We must also be clear about the background to the current arguments and to any changes. Last year, local authorities increased their spending by 9 per cent. over the previous year. That represented an increase in expenditure of £2·7 billion. This year, local authorities intend to increase their spending by 15 per cent. That represents an increase in cash terms of £4·6 billion. There is no easy, cost-free way in which the consequences of spending at such levels can be dealt with. We must recognise that it simply is not the case that town halls and county halls live outside the normal economic rules of the world.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: Will the Secretary of State give way?

Mr. Patten: No, not for the moment.
In the rest of my speech I wish to deal with four issues. First, who pays the community charge? Secondly, how much do people have to pay? Thirdly, I wish to make a few remarks about the uniform business rate and revaluation. Fourthly, I shall come back to the issue with which the hon. Member for Dagenham flirted in his speech—how we should raise revenue for local government.
Who pays the community charge? I said earlier that our community charge is based on a simple principle—that


almost everyone should make some contribution to the cost of local government services. The key words are "some contribution". The reliefs and benefits available make sure that not everyone pays the same.
I was interested in the campaign of the Labour-controlled Association of London Authorities, which placed several advertisements in the newspapers about benefits and reliefs and generally about the community charge, although it did not call it that. I draw the attention of the House to two points. First, the advertisement said that a small percentage of people in London
may well be entitled to transitional relief … A few might find themselves entitled to a rebate of up to 80 per cent.
The advertisement referred to "a small percentage" and a "few". The House should know the latest figures that we have on benefit entitlement and relief. Over 10 million people in Great Britain are entitled to community charge benefit and reliefs. The cost in the coming year of those benefits will be £2·9 billion. About half those who are entitled to benefit will receive the maximum. I do not know whether that is regarded as "a small percentage" or as "a few".
The cost of the benefits and reliefs is 20 per cent. more in real terms this year than the cost of rate rebates and community charge benefit in Scotland last year.

Mr. Gould: That is because the bills went up.

Mr. Patten: I am coming to that. The improvements in the taper have ensured that another 650,000 people are entitled to benefit at a cost of £125 million. In England alone, we reckon that about 7·5 million people will benefit from transitional relief. The cost for the whole of England, Wales and Scotland will be £387 million. The total cost of benefits and reliefs in the coming year will be £3·3 billion. That is what the Labour Association of London Local Authorities called "a small percentage" and "a few".
The advertisement said that a small percentage
may well be entitled to transitional relief'
in London. I have looked at the figures for Barking and Dagenham, a borough with which the hon. Member for Dagenham is familiar. More than one in four charge payers will receive transitional relief there. I make a serious point to the House. It is disreputable, when the Labour party is allegedly keen on maximising take-up, to give people the impression that benefits and reliefs are less generous than they are and thus encourage them not to apply for benefit. That is intolerable and it is the only way in which one can read that advertisement.

Mr. A. J. Beith: I assure the Secretary of State that some of us have tried hard to tell our constituents what they are entitled to. So far the Secretary of State has been unable to answer by way of parliamentary question why residents of sheltered housing schemes appear to be entitled to neither transitional relief nor special transitional relief. My attempts to obtain an answer on that point have been met with holding answers from Ministers who themselves do not seem to know why those pensioners, many of whom deserve relief, receive neither type of relief.

Mr. Patten: They are entitled to benefit and rebates, as the hon. Gentleman knows. In the cases to which I believe the hon. Gentleman refers, they were not previously paying domestic rates. Issues such as that and multiple

occupation of large houses will have to be considered in the review in the next few weeks and months. I repeat to the hon. Gentleman that they are entitled to benefit.
As the hon. Member for Dagenham perceptively mentioned a few moments ago, the cost of benefits and reliefs is largely a reflection of the level of the charge, and the level of the charge is a reflection of the level of local authority expenditure, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned at the beginning of his speech.
Even if we accept every argument put by local authorities and accept, passingly, that local authorities are pluperfect, nothing conceivably justifies a 15 per cent. increase in expenditure this year. We know perfectly well that local authority after local authority has jacked up its expenditure and blamed the consequences on the introduction of the community charge.

Mr. Ian Bruce: As my right hon. Friend knows, I asked the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) what Labour would do about keeping down high budgets. Budgets have nothing to do with the way in which the money is collected. In Weymouth and Portland borough council, the chairman of the policy resources committee happily told me that there was nothing that the Secretary of State could do about community charge overspending because the authority's budget was so low. Is there anything that can be done, even at this late stage, to ensure that we can do something to bring relief to the constituents in authorities whose budgets have gone up nearly 50 per cent. and are spending one and a half times what they spent last year? Transitional relief does not benefit my constituents because the local authority has overspent.

Mr. Patten: Under existing legislation, I cannot cap authorities with budgets of less than £15 million, but I shall certainly bear in mind my hon. Friend's point because I know how much concern it causes.
My hon. Friend raised the matter of Labour spending. I cannot understand why the Opposition are so reluctant to accept that it is Labour that has blazed the trail in overspending this year. I thought that the Labour party prided itself on being the big spender. I thought that that vestigial remnant of Croslandite social democracy was one of the foundation stones of the political beliefs of the hon. Member for Dagenham.
If we consider the history, or this year's record of Labour local authorities, the facts speak for themselves. If we consider the relationship to grant-related expenditure assessments during the past five or six years, we see that Conservative authorities across the country, on average, spend within their GREA and Labour authorities spend, on average, 12 per cent. above. Exactly the same pattern emerges this year from the standing spending assessments.

Mr. Allen McKay: Why?

Mr. Patten: I have considered why and I shall come to that later.
In every class of authority—shire, shire district, metropolitan district and London borough—Labour authorities are spending a great deal more than Conservative authorities. Labour authorities consistently spend more than Conservative ones and it is not surprising that Labour authorities have been capped. During the past six or seven years, we have capped 70 authorities, only one of which was Conservative. This year we have capped 21


authorities, all of which are Labour or Labour-hung controlled; none of them is Conservative. The reason for that is the pattern of overspending by Labour authorities.
The Labour party is not, as I understand it, against capping in principle. The hon. Member for Dagenham now says that it is, but on the "Today" programme the hon. Gentleman said—if he said it there, it must be true:
In extremis there must always be that reserve power to cap.
It seems that he agrees with capping in extremis, but not in Derbyshire, where the authority has spent 25 per cent.—or £157 a head—over SSA. He agrees with it in extremis, but not in Basildon, where the authority has spent 194 per cent.—or £154 a head—over SSA. We should all like to know what the hon. Gentleman means by "in extremis".
It is perfectly obvious that Labour, whether in town halls or central Government, is unfamiliar with extremis. Some of us, as we trudge wearily through middle age, are old enough to remember the days when we had a Labour Government, and they were capped by the international bankers. Therefore, it is not surprising that 21 of the 21 authorities capped this year are Labour or hung Labour.
I turn now to the uniform business rate and revaluation, on which the hon. Member for Dagenham—[HON. MEMBERS: "Give way to him."] I shall do so soon, I promise. I want to turn to the uniform business rate and revaluation.

Mr. Ian Gow: Will my right hon. Friend please give way instantly to the shadow Secretary of State so that he can define to the House the meaning of the phrase "in extremis"?

Mr. Patten: I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for Dagenham if he would like to make that definition—[Interruption.] I think that the hon. Gentleman has taken an early bath.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the uniform business rate and revaluation, which is important—I do not say that just because it is important in Bath. He knows that, while there have been arguments about some of its details during the past months and years, the principle of the uniform business rate has been largely accepted, indeed endorsed, by chambers of commerce and other organisations representing business. That was largely because they saw it as a way of sheltering business from the consequences of excessive spending by local authorities in the wake of the decision to end business votes in 1969. Undoubtedly, in the medium and long term, business and industry, and therefore job creation and investment, are likely to be the main beneficiaries of the changes that we have made in local government finance.
There are problems, not only in the south and constituencies like mine, but elsewhere in the country. Yesterday, I was in York, where people face difficulties. But those difficulties have nothing to do with the uniform business rate; they are the result of revaluation.
I am afraid that the hon. Member for Dagenham does not understand. In my constituency, Bath—the same will be true elsewhere—the uniform business rate is 10 per cent. below the non-domestic rate previously set. If small businesses in my constituency were still paying rates on the old basis, they would be paying more this year because of Avon's overspending than they are paying with the revaluation. They will pay 15 per cent. plus inflation. Therefore, the uniform business rate—

Mr. Gould: rose—

Mr. Patten: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if he wants. If he cannot explain "in extremis" at least he can ask me a question.

Mr. Gould: I assume that "in extremis" is a phrase known to the right hon. Gentleman, even though it may not be known to his hon. Friends.
The uniform business rate, like any other rating system, depends, first, on the property's valuation and, secondly, on poundage. If the valuation goes up, provided that the local authority has the power to fix the poundage, it can reduce the poundage.

Mr. Patten: Would the hon. Gentleman like to list those Labour authorities that have recently reduced the poundage? It will not take him long.

Mr. Gould: The Secretary of State's memory may not go back very far, but I have at least taken the trouble to check the figures. If the Secretary of State would care to look at the figures for the last time there was a revaluation he would find that in most local authorities up and down the country, when valuations went up substantialty—roughly doubled—in most cases, the poundage was roughly halved.

Mr. Patten: There are many examples, of which my constituency is one, where the uniform business rate is lower than the non-domestic poundage. So businesses in my constituency are being protected from excessive spending by Avon; and since the business rate has been increasing year after year by 1·3 per cent. more than the rate of inflation, pegging the business rate to—at most—the rate of inflation each year will give a substantial bonus to businesses. I am perfectly happy to give way continually to the hon. Member for Dagenham if he will tell me which Labour local authorities have reduced their business rate poundage. The truth of the matter—

Mr. David Howell: My right hon. Friend is approaching the uniform business rate in a constructive way, but will he bear in mind the fact that, on Third Reading, his predecessor promised that links between local enterprise and local government, which are important to some of us in my part of the world, would be preserved and strengthened—not broken—despite the nationalisation of the business rate? How does he see the Government redeeming that promise?
Secondly, my right hon. Friend will be aware that, when a new business is acquired under the new conditions, the acquirer does not get any of the benefits of the graduation or transition to the uniform business rate. Is he applying his mind to that problem, because it is a serious deterrent to the acquisition, growth and trading of new businesses?

Mr. Patten: On the first point, the consultations that have taken place in the past will continue. I believe that they are extremely important, as is the relationship between local councils and local business communities.
Secondly, because it is a tax on property, the relief applies, as my right hon. Friend will know, to the property rather than to the business, whether the business is new or not. Following my right hon. Friend's logic, we should, I suppose, have to apply the transitional relief to new buildings and new property. I undertake to look at this


issue again, but I foresee that it would be very difficult to get round the principles that I have mentioned—I think that they are principles of some substance.

Mr. David Nicholson: The Secretary of State's comment on the second point advanced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) is welcome, as this is most important to Conservative Members. Will he confirm that business and industry are paying no more in real terms in the coming year to local government than they paid last year? Will he also confirm that their contribution will be capped, in terms of inflation, from now on?

Mr. Patten: That is exactly what I hoped I had said earlier, but I am delighted that my hon. Friend has afforded me the opportunity to make myself clearer than I evidently was a few moments ago. I think that the principles that we have applied to transitional relief are sound and substantial. The point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford would be difficult to accommodate within those principles; nevertheless, I am prepared to consider it, but I cannot promise to do so with a mind as open as he might like it to be on this occasion.
One point about transitional relief is of considerable importance to local businesses, particularly small businesses. A number of them have argued that at the end of the transitional period of five years they are likely to face a steep increase in their bills. We are prepared to extend the transitional period if, after the next revaluation, small businesses face a steep increase on top of the 15 per cent. tranches of increase that will have occurred in the intervening period.

Miss Kate Hoey: As the right hon. Gentleman is dealing with anomalies associated with the UBR, what does he feel about the fact that about 150,000 voluntary sports clubs are being valued in the same way as businesses? Many of them—small cricket, rugby and sailing clubs—have been facing enormous rises that will force them to close. Does he accept that the way forward is to provide mandatory rate relief for all voluntary sports clubs facing the uniform business rate?

Mr. Patten: I do not believe that most sports clubs are facing the problems to which the hon. Lady referred.
I have spoken about the UBR, but not yet about the revaluation, on which I have an important point to make. It is significant that we have established once again, on the record, that the Opposition wholly support revaluation. I am delighted to hear that, and I think that it is also supported by the Liberal Democrats. So there is support throughout the House for revaluation. I hope that the Labour party will express that support when campaigning in the south of England, and that the Liberals will do likewise when campaigning in seats such as mine. I am sure that they express their enthusiasm for revaluation when campaigning in, say, the north and the west midlands. I was in the west midlands last week—in Derby, Walsall and Wolverhampton—where, at the end of the transitional period, they will have gained a 40 per cent. reduction in local business rates. That result of the revaluation shows a proper regard for the changes that have taken place in our regional economies and in the national economy over the past two decades.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: We have taken a locally predicated supply and demand economy and translated it into a national tax, and we now have unevenness on that basis. The sum of £610 million—on the unabated figures—is to be transferred from London to other areas. The Secretary of State may think that wholly reasonable; I do not know the circumstances of Bath, but my right hon. Friend is asking local traders and suppliers to find £610 million over the abated period. That has consequences for their profits and losses. The company that I know personally faces a valuation rise from £10,500 to £356,000, giving rise to a tax payable of £110,000 after we have ended abatement.
This is destructive of business and small business. What proposals does my right hon. Friend have to ameliorate or reform the system?

Mr. Patten: If my hon. Friend is as honest a man as I am sure he is, I assume that he makes exactly the same remarks in his constituency, because it is benefiting from the revaluation. We are talking about a rebalancing of resources and tax over five years, and it is conceivable that, if the period is extended, these sums will not have to be found over the five-year period—it is important to remember that.
With respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), I have found it instructive to look at business rates as a proportion of the rents being paid by local businesses, and to look at rates as a proportion of turnover. Typically, they constitute 1.5 per cent. to 2 per cent. of turnover in most of the cases that have been drawn to my attention.

Mr. Norman Tebbit: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in effect, an important regional and industrial policy is involved in these changes? In essence, places such as Amersham and Henley are surrendering resources that are going to places such as Stockton. The money is going from the softish industries such as financial services and retailing to manufacturing industries. Since these changes will also reduce the north-south divide, they will have the overwhelming support of one or two of my right hon. Friends who represent some of the seats that will lose the resources to others in the north.

Mr. Patten: I cannot comment on the particular examples that my right hon. Friend drew entirely at random, but it is one of the great anomalies of life that, just as those who are most enthusiastic for investment in infrastructure—in principle—are most resistant to it in practice, so very often those who are theoretically enthusiastic about shifting resources to the regions and the north and manufacturing raise one or two doubts when such a shift actually starts to happen.
I look forward to the hon. Member for Dagenham intervening several times in the next part of my speech. At the end of my speech I want to deal with the ways in which we should fund local government spending. Until this year we have funded it on the basis of a tax on property. That is notionally determined and long out of date, and everybody recognises the grave difficulties that would have arisen in revaluation. We saw some of those difficulties in Scotland.
The hon. Member for Dagenham does not agree, but every political party agrees that we could not have continued with the rates. The question arises about what we put in their place. We have put forward the blindingly


obvious and are implementing our proposals. To its credit, the Liberal party has put forward proposals for a local income tax. I do not agree with those proposals because at a stroke they would wipe out the income tax cuts that we have made over the past 11 years. According to the author of those proposals, every couple with a joint income of £12,000 or more would pay more under the Liberal proposals than under the community charge. Of course, they would mean that we would have to face the prospect of a man such as Mr. Bookbinder being Chancellor. At least the Liberals have had the honesty to put forward their proposals.

Mr. Tim Janman: My right hon. Friend is correct about the honesty of the Liberal party. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) mentioned a MORI opinion poll. Does my right hon. Friend know whether any of the people questioned in that poll live in the constituency of Dagenham'? If they do, were they aware when giving their opinions on the various alternatives to the old rating system that Labour's roof tax will be £872 on a property worth £80,000? Such properties are certainly not uncommon in Dagenham. According to the speech of the hon. Member for Dagenham there would be a local income tax on top of that.

Mr. Patten: I am a man of almost inordinate charity and I know how the opinion poll was taken. It was a telephone poll and, by accident—it is a contingent factor of history—all those who were telephoned had been sent in advance a copy of the statement that the hon. Gentleman promised to us. I am sure that they were all well informed about Labour policy. Labour's approach to this issue has been a humiliating story. Its behaviour has lacked principle and has been governed throughout by the cheapest expediency. It is a long story and I will not trouble the House or frighten the horses by going through it.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), who was the previous Opposition spokesman on local government, is not in his place. Speaking two and a half years ago on 24 September 1987 to the Association of Metropolitan Authorities he said:
I am saying to NEC policy makers 'Hang on a minute. What is our policy on local government?' Putting it at its boldest we have not got a policy. That is the actual truth.
Unlike his hon. Friends, I do not think that the hon. Gentleman cared for the Trappist approach to policy-making. We have been hanging on, not for a minute, but for two and a half years and, putting it at its boldest, that is still the actual truth.
The hon. Member for Dagenham went through an encyclopaedia of excuses about why Labour does not have a policy and overturns policy after policy. In November last year, nearly six months ago, he explained the position. He said:
Labour is looking at a range of options, some of which will be single taxes and some of which will not.
Last night we had pendulum voting which some of us found rather confusing. The hon. Gentleman obviously has a pendulum approach to policy-making. He said:
Nothing is set in concrete.
Concrete has nothing to do with it. I listened to the hon. Gentleman's speech in today's debate and from that it seems that nothing is set in raspberry jelly.
What does the Labour party favour? Is it a roof tax, a floor tax or perhaps a window tax? The party cannot say

and it will not say. If it is to be a tax on property values, how will it be calculated? How will areas such as the south be affected or streets where values have changed? How will council tenants and people who have taken advantage of the right to buy be affected? Again Labour will not say and cannot say.

Mr. Richard Holt: Will my right hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Patten: Yes, for the last time.

Mr. Holt: My right hon. Friend does the Labour party less than justice. In the House we cannot get one squeak from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman on local government and its financing. However, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) sneaked to the north-east of England and let the cat out of the bag. He said that Labour would reorganise local government and bring in regional government and give it the unfettered right to raise taxes.

Mr. Patten: I am sure that if we ask the hon. Member for Dagenham about that he will send us a copy of the press release. Labour cannot and will not say whether the tax is to be imposed on individuals or on households. Apparently not everyone will pay. Fewer people will pay, so I guess that those who pay will pay more. Apparently most will pay less, but there is still a certain amount of explaining to do.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: I see that the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mrs. Heal) has entered the Chamber. What does she have to say?

Mr. Patten: I am sure that we will have a contribution later in the debate.
It is difficult for us to do better than Labour in describing Labour's position. In February, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar), when he was half-launching half the Labour party's plan for Scotland, said that it would have been cynical to withhold the plans until after the regional elections in May. It would have been cynical in Scotland, but apparently it is not cynical in England. More to the point, the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook spoke two years ago at the outset of the Labour party's local government election campaign. The nominal deputy leader of the Labour party said:
If we are to have a Labour Government we must start straight away to begin … to tell the people not simply what we oppose but what we would put in the place of Tory legislation. I take as my example the poll tax. Our local government campaign must not be and will not be a series of attacks on the Government. Simply to oppose is the sort of vacuous opposition which the people of this country despise. We must and we will offer our alternative.
We know that Labour believes that local authorities should spend more, except in extremis—whatever that may mean. We know that the Labour party thinks that that spending should not be met by ratepayers, because it does not believe in rates. We know that it does not believe that it should be paid by charge payers because it does not believe in the community charge. We know that, whatever the level of spending, those who will have to meet it will, in almost all cases, be better off. One of two questions have to be answered. The hon. Member for Garscadden called it cynical and the right hon. Member for, Sparkbrook called it vacuous and despicable.
I cannot improve on those judgments, and I do not for one moment believe that the House will take a different view when it votes tonight.

Mr. Ronnie Fearn: We are all aware of the hardship that the poll tax will create and is creating. Across the country, local papers have been deluged with letters from people, some young and many old, who fear that they will not be able to cope with the added burden of the poll tax bill. The anguish that comes across from these letters is hard to ignore. In one such letter, an elderly gentleman claimed that, after 50 years of being a responsible, law-abiding citizen, and after fighting a war to defend his freedom and that of his fellow countrymen, he would, for the first time in his life, break the law, A pensioner in Canterbury—a council tenant hit by the double jeopardy of a 55 per cent. rent rise and the poll tax bill—found that she was not entitled to the same rebate as she had had for her rates, and is now left with £15 a week to cope with food, clothes and other necessities. Such is the effect of this most unfair poll tax.
I do not condone the breaking of the law, and all our candidates are saying that, but I understand the depths of despair that people feel. The tax not only makes people break the law but disfranchises many people. I mean not just those people who deliberately leave their names off the electoral role—estimated at 15,000 in Strathclyde alone—but those who are so disillusioned that they will not cast their vote in the coming local elections, or any other elections.
I met a gentleman on his doorstep last week. He told me that he was 82 years old and had voted in nearly every election since before the war, and always voted Conservative, but would never do so again because he would never vote again. I found this very sad. I stayed talking to him for 10 minutes, and I found that the poll tax was the final blow in a long round of hard knocks. I managed to convince him that there is a fair alternative—a local income tax—and that there is a party that puts people first and whose ideology is not centred on politics. He agreed to give it one more go, and I arranged a lift to the polling station for him. I do not know for whom he will vote, but at least he will vote, and that was the aim of my argument.
The point of the story is that it is similar to the experience of many other hon. Members. I am doing it not to plug local income tax—I shall do that later—but to highlight the disillusionment that the poll tax has brought, and the effect that that will have on the elections. There is already a worrying trend of low turnouts in elections, particularly local government elections. That has worrying implications for democracy and gives the lie to the Government's claim that the poll tax will lead to more accountability. Perhaps Professor Peter Townsend's words express it better than mine. He said:
The poll tax is as much a blow to democracy as it is an unforgivable charge on the poor. It will encourage people to pick up their belongings and fly by night.
On top of that, non-registration for the poll tax will lead to distortion in local finance and will add to the burden of the law-abiding resident.
The law-abiding resident is already being penalised in some areas, and has no chance of holding local

government responsible. I am referring to the safety net, as a result of which a resident of one area pays for a proportion of the services in another. I am not disputing that some form of safety net is required, but it should be a special grant from central Government, paid for out of general taxation rather than out of the pockets of those least able to pay.
There is something illogical and disgraceful about a system that insists that somebody living in rented accommodation in, say, Camden and just making ends meet, should pay £75 towards making the poll tax burden of somebody living comfortably in, say, Wandsworth, a lot lighter. There is something even more illogical and ridiculous about a system that can catch Greenwich, which, if it had to spend in line with its standard spending assessment, would have its community charge set at minus £7 a head. The Government's extraordinary judgment about the needs of local people is a major cause of some of these anomalies.
I am never too sure whether the devastating effects of the Government's programmes on our citizens are the result of complete incompetence and ignorance of what happens in the real world, or are merely a case of a bull in a china shop, intent only on reaching its objective, regardless of cost.

Mr. William O'Brien: Will the hon. Gentleman take into consideration the joint and severe liability? A family with a 20-year-old daughter on a low income will qualify for the 80 per cent. rebate, but a housewife with no income does not qualify. Will the hon. Gentleman dwell on that anomaly, which has been brought about by the actions of the Secretary of State?

Mr. Fearn: I shall dwell on that for a moment, but the dwelling will be from the point of view of what happens on the doorstep. More often than not, the housewife comes in answer to one's knock and she usually says that she is penalised. Not many of the men say that, because they believe that they should be paying for something. The Prime Minister has always said that she sticks up for the housewife, but she is not doing so in this case.
It is well documented what nonsense the standard spending assessments are. No account has been taken of economic deprivation in the service block headed "all other services", which covers items of expenditure from recreation to school crossing patrols. According to the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, quoted in a Local Government Information Unit document published in April 1990:
The incorporation of an economic deprivation indicator would increase the standard spending assessments for 33 of the 36 metropolitan districts by as much as £64 per poll tax payer in Knowsley and £55 in Newcastle.
In Oxfordshire, the education SSA would allow expenditure below the amount necessary to maintain the current year's spend, which would involve a cut equivalent to getting rid of 128 primary teachers and 162 further education teachers. No account is taken of the additional amounts required to implement the Government's education reforms.
Police authorities, including the Merseyside police authority, are finding that the assessed level of capital expenditure, net of grant, falls far short of the supplementary credit approvals. The new system of


finance, combined with the recent announcement of the credit approvals for 1990–91, is causing great concern because of the implications for policing.
As a former spokesman on health for my party, I am concerned about the implications for community care. I only hope that the recommendations on cost by the various working groups on this matter will be fully supported and funded by the Government. Perhaps the Minister will clarify this. Whether the funds should be earmarked to prevent moneys from being used for other services and to keep the level of tax low will have to be decided before the scheme takes effect.
I am worried, too, about the new finance system and that it may prove to be an excuse for the non-existence or the poor quality of a particular service. A recent response by an officer of Epping Forest district council to an inquiry by a local resident illustrates why I am concerned. The resident inquired why his road was never cleaned and he was informed that to provide such a service would mean adding £7 to his poll tax bill. He was somewhat surprised as he thought that he was paying for road cleaning. He was not too pleased with the officer's response because he knew that the council had added £20 to his poll tax bill to cover the interest charges on the cost of new council offices, which had soared from £4 million to £15 million. It is a monstrosity of a building. I might add that it does not even have a letter box.
Will community care services be safe in the hands of councils such as Epping Forest? For the first time, Essex county council has introduced charges for home helps, which provide a vital lifeline for care in the community.
Standard spending assessments do not have any link with the type, level or quality of services that are provided. The new finance system is flawed with dramatic consequences. Areas of deprivation are seeing vital resources transferred to more affluent areas. The true effect of the transfer is hard to see as the safety net serves to hide the effects as well as to soften them. Even with the safety net in operation—this is according to figures published by the Local Government Information Unit—the north-west is set to lose £86 million in 1990–91. Once the safety net has been pulled away, that loss will increase to £113 million. The losses will result in a higher poll tax or a reduced level of service. Either way, local communities and local people will suffer.
Many of the anomalies are the result of changes to the business rating system. The uniform business rate is as much of a disaster as the poll tax. Some areas are losing vast amounts of income as central Government distribute funds according to the population of poll tax payers and not according to the businesses in the area. The UBR removes yet another source of local determination from local government to central Government. Local business will have no links with the local community and, as a result, it will feel less responsible towards it and local residents.
Parish councils, which have benefited from a business precept in the past, often as a recompense for noise, smells and general mayhem, will be the losers this time round. Many parish councils will no longer be able to run community and recreation services. Their parent councils will wield more power.
Rate bills spell ruin for many small businesses. On top of high interest and mortgage rates, their rate bills will be devastating. It is a sad reflection on the Government that their policies will kill the very enterprises that they claim

they wish to see prosper. It is not only in Bath that shopkeepers and the managers of other businesses are up in arms. That is the position in many other areas, including Canterbury, where some shopkeepers and others are facing increases of 200 to 300 per cent. The future is bleak for them. As their margins become tighter, they will find it increasingly difficult to wind up and sell their businesses. Mortgage rates, interest rates and the UBR without transitional relief, which a new owner would not be entitled to, make the prospect of selling a business extremely poor.
There are spin-offs from the UBR that will fall on the consumer. London Transport is already saying in press statements that the extra £34 million that it will have to find in the next financial year will have to be funded through even higher fares.
Liberal Democrats have a five-point plan to ease the burden of the UBR as well as an alternative policy which we would introduce along with our alternative local income tax system. One of the five points is that transitional relief should be applied to all businesses that existed in April 1990, regardless of whether they move premises subsequently. We should like to see the Government introduce a land value tax with some possible exemptions for agricultural land, for example. A land value tax which was set locally would preserve the essential link between business and the community and would enhance local accountability.
Local income tax enhances local autonomy. The rate is determined locally and is collected by the Inland Revenue. Employers would deduct a standard rate of local tax with an end-of-year adjustment by way of a refund or bill through the Inland Revenue. In practice, 70 to 80 per cent. of local income tax payers would receive rebates through the Inland Revenue. The system is fair because, unlike the poll tax, or the Labour party's roof tax, it is based on the ability to pay. It is easy to administer and cheaper to collect than the poll tax.
The Labour party's roof tax is unfair, as a tax on property bears no relation to an individual's ability to pay. The elderly widow would pay the same as the family of four or five. The Labour party would tax home improvements. The roof tax is also a tax on energy conservation measures. The two-tax system that appears to be on the books for England and Wales is likely to be a nightmare. In Sefton, for example, the official figures of the Department of the Environment show that for a property valued at £50,000 the bill would be £523. That would rise to £744 for a property valued at £80,000.
The Labour party should have courage and should announce in principle what form its tax will take before we embark on the local elections. If local government is to be accountable, the electorate should at least have the right to know for what it is voting. With the Liberal Democrat system of local income tax, local autonomy will be increased by allowing the local authority to raise more funds through local taxes, with a corresponding drop in central funds and a cut in national income tax. That would be in stark contrast to the steady drop in Government funding and increases in central Government control.
Despite all the talk about the poll tax making local government accountable to local people, it still represents only about 25 to 30 per cent. of local government income. The rest is controlled by central Government. Even the poll tax is subject to central control, as the recent capping fiasco has shown.
If the Minister wishes, I shall send him a copy of the Liberal Democrats alternative policy together with our charter for small businesses and a copy of our publication entitled "Local Income Tax—The Best Way". I shall probably send him an invoice at the same time. The catch phrase that appears in many Conservative leaflets—I have seen them locally in my ward, my town and in surrounding districts—is "in touch". The result of the local elections will prove that the local Conservative parties and their friends in central Government are very much out of touch. Perhaps the poll tax will prove to be the Government's Waterloo.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that at 6 o'clock we shall commence 10-minute speeches.

Mr. Robert B. Jones: The last time that I heard the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) speak in the Chamber was on Second Reading of the Environmental Protection Bill. During the consideration of that Bill in Committee it was said that it was the weakest performance of any Front-Bench spokesman from either side of the House for many years. At any rate, that was the position until today, when the hon. Gentleman capped his own performance. It was an extraordinary admission that the Labour party is not prepared to come clean on its proposals for local government.
When Mr. Speaker welcomes guests to this place he stresses that Parliament is about the clash of opinions, about resolving issues by debate. It is not possible to resolve by debate if only one side is putting forward its point of view and no constructive alternative is being presented by the party that seeks to be the alternative Government. That is disgraceful behaviour towards the House and an abdication of democratic responsibility and of everything for which we stand.
No one can pretend that the introduction of the community charge is easy or could ever have been conceived to be easy. It is the greatest upheaval in local government finance for a century. However, it is intended to achieve two important objectives—fairness and accountability. On fairness, the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn) drew a parallel between a widow and a family of four living next door and earning a living. That point was best put by one of my constituents, Mr. Richard Clark, who said in a letter that if he went into a pub and ordered a pint of beer, he would expect to pay £1·20. If a family of four ordered a round, what should they pay? The answer is obvious.
The system is not aimed only at trying to correct that sort of unfairness; it is intended also to correct the unfairnesses of the rateable value system. In my local the other day, we were talking about the rates that people used to pay. Obviously, people now compare what they paid in rates with what they are paying in community charge. One of my friends, who is also my dustman, lives in a one-bedroom council flat. He was paying £500 in rates. Another of my friends is a self-employed roofer, and he and his wife live in a three-bedroomed semi-detached in the same town. They paid £400 in rates. Another of my

friends is a wealthy socialist who lives in a four-bedroom period house in the old part of Tring. He paid £300 in rates.
Of course, if there had been a revaluation many of those problems would have been sorted out—but over the 10 or 15 years until the next revaluation, until the next time that a Government had the courage to pick up that baton, those unfairnesses would have crept back into the system—especially in areas where properties are being improved, thereby making these areas better and better. Unfairness was inherent in the way that rateable values were calculated.
Another fact that we all forget is that the old grant distribution formula was inherently unfair because it took the rateable value of an area as its proxy for the wealth of that area. In the county of Hertfordshire, part of which I represent, average rateable values were 25 per cent. above the national average, yet incomes were only 10 per cent. above the national average. The net effect was that, even if local authorities had spent at the targets laid down by central Government, the amount of grant received would have been minuscule compared with many other local authorities. In its last year of the rating system, Hertfordshire county council received no grant from central Government.
Dacorum borough council, my district authority, received £1 million. Under the new system, it gets £16 million. That is extremely welcome. Were it not for the safety net, it would have received even more than that. Any system that is designed to recognise the needs of areas and also their resources to raise funds for their own purposes must be complicated. The trouble with the old system was that it relied entirely on rateable values on the resources side, and addressing that problem has caused many of the difficulties in moving to the community charge.
The second important point is accountability. It was wrong that, under the old system, as little as one quarter of the number of eligible electors paid rates. There could not possibly be proper accountability. However, there are other barriers to accountability, some of which need addressing. How can there be proper accountability when charges are levied by three different tiers of local government—by county councils, borough councils and parish or town councils?
I accept that it is difficult to reform the local government structure at the same time as reforming finance, but not all tiers have elections this year. In the shire areas, the county councils are not holding elections. They have used the opportunity to increase their precepts while the poor mugs who have to face election are struggling to keep their precepts under control. There cannot be proper accountability while there is a multi-tier system. We must move towards a single-tier system. Redcliffe-Maud was absolutely right, and we should have grasped that fact way back in the early-1970s.
If there are elections only every four years, accountability cannot be made to bite when everyone is paying the community charge. If there are elections for the whole of councils, as there are in London, there is a better case for accountability—at least one year in four. This year there will not be proper accountability for the principal councils in the shire areas.
Another problem is that people simply do not know what they are paying for. How many times have we heard people say, "What is the local authority doing about


the hospital?" People aften think that the only service they receive for their community charge is having their bins emptied—or not emptied, depending on where they live. They do not realise that 70 per cent. of the money goes on education—teachers' salaries and overheads.
We have a difficult task in trying to educate people. Despite all the good measures taken by past Secretaries of State through the leaflets that accompanied rates' bills, and which now accompany community charge bills, it is an unfortunate fact that people do not read them. They throw them away and so are unaware of the facts. Therefore, those who claim that the simple answer to the problem of the community charge is presentation should remember what happened to previous pious intentions.
Another point about accountability is the safety net. I know that some authorities have had more than their fair share of grant in the past, just as my authority has had less than its fair share. It is difficult to move that money at one time. That has made it all too easy for people to suggest that the community charge is above the levels suggested by the Government because of the safety net, not because of overspending by local authorities.
The hon. Member for Dagenham said that many of the letters that he had received objected to the principle of the community charge. That is certainly not my experience in Hertfordshire, West. Like other hon. Members, I have received a great deal of mail, but the vast majority of letters have begun, "I accept the community charge in principle, but I object to the amount that I am being asked to pay."
Of course, the amount of community charge depends entirely on the policies of local authorities. It is not true simply to say that that is a product of what is happening this year; it is also a product of what has happened in past years. Hertfordshire had a Liberal-Labour majority between 1985 and 1989. During that time, the council increased its spending by £40 million more than the rate of inflation. It increased the number of staff from 33,000 to 38,000. Of course, those people cannot be sacked overnight. The problem cannot be brought under control instantly.
That is compounded by another factor: what happened to the reserves? In the run-up to the 1989 county council elections, the Labour party raided the balances to levy an artificially low rate. That artificially low rate is now being compared with what is an artificially high community charge, which is having to bear the burden not only of normal balances but of restoring the balances. When saying, "Labour councils bad; Conservative councils good," it is easy to forget that the reason that many of the Conservative councils that have not done as well when setting their community charges this year find themselves in that position is because there were opposition majorities on those county councils in the four years between 1985–89.
We are now up against the 10-minute rule. I wish to deal with two or three matters about which we must do something. No introduction of a new tax is without its problems. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been open in saying that he will consider suggestions and advice during the next few months. I welcome that. One matter—it is not a high-cost problem, but it has caused a great feeling of injustice for a few people—is the discretion given to local authorities in what they can levy on empty homes. I mean not only second homes, but homes that are empty for one reason or another.
A distinction should be drawn between ordinary cases and the person, perhaps of limited means, who has inherited a house and cannot obtain a rebate on his second property—not all local authorities are very considerate about such cases—or the individual who has to live in another part of the country by virtue of his employment. A Territorial Army caretaker took the Government's advice and come south to my constituency for a job, so he has to pay the community charge in Hertfordshire and in Yorkshire. That cannot be right. Owning a second house is not necessarily a measure of one's personal wealth or affluence. It can be a matter of necessity or an accident of history.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has a much more difficult task when it comes to the standard spending assessment. Many years ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) suggested simplifying SSAs—or grant-related expenditure assessments, as they were then—but found that local authorities wanted to complicate matters still further by adding more and more factors to be taken into account. Local authorities have themselves to blame to some extent for the SSA system.
I advise my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State not to go for wholesale changes. Any problem he may solve that way will throw up other problems elsewhere.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman will have to write to the Secretary of State instead. I call Mr. Eric Illsley.

Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there any chance of you waiving the sub judice rule to allow the Government to make a statement, if they apply to do so, on the charge against Dr. Christopher Cowley in relation to the alleged Iraqi weapon? It is a matter of urgency, and possibly the Government ought to make a statement tonight.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has me at a total disadvantage. I shall look into that matter. Mr. Illsley.

Mr. Eric Illsley: In view of the limited time available to me, I shall confine my remarks to the problems confronting Barnsley local authority, which is one of the 21 that have unfortunately been charge-capped. The Secretary of State has given as a reason the fact that the standard spending assessment levied by the Government has been exceeded by 17 per cent. That is hardly surprising, given the very low level of SSA applied to Barnsley under the Government's formula.
In the past, the grant-related expenditure assessment had precisely the same effect. A former Minister, the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer), on a visit to members of Barnsley's local authority, said that Barnsley and Greenwich would always come at the bottom of the list because of peculiar factors affecting them, Tonight I want to inform the Government of the reasons for Barnsley's low SSA.
In the past, under GREA the resource element always came to the aid of the authority, enabling it to meet expenditure levels. The maximum amount of demand on the collection fund that will now be made by Barnsley, according to the figure levied by the Government, will be £132 million, compared with the previous level of £142 million—yet the Government have given no indication of


how they arrived at a figure £10 million lower. We are still no wiser as to why £10 million has been lopped off the local authority's spending ability.
Barnsley metropolitan borough council will have to accept that degree of capping, request a redetermination of its budget, or look to the Government to take more into consideration the special factors that I shall outline and revalue Barnsley's SSA. After all, as I said during Question Time today, the SSA is the basis of charge capping.
Earlier, the Secretary of State said that if Barnsley chooses to be a high-spending authority, it will have to suffer the consequences. The truth is that, in common with a cluster of authorities identified by the Audit Commission, Barnsley has a very low standard spending assessment, ranking 35 out of the 36 metropolitan districts. It even came low on the list of grant-related expenditure assessments. Manchester has an SSA of £1,170 per adult, Liverpool £1,068, and Birmingham £1,060. Why are their figures much higher than Barnsley's SSA of £669 per adult for providing the same level of service?
The timing of the capping announcement places an extra burden on authorities in trying to identify savings, having already started the financial year. If savings can be made—I am not saying that they can—there is little time to implement them. If an authority has to consider redundancies, it will need to give 90 days' notice, and then the financial year will be nearly half gone. Barnsley will have to identify savings of £10 million six months into its budget.
Another problem is that Barnsley has already sent out its community charge bills. Charge payers will have to be re-billed, and I am told that no indication can be given then of any sum that the individual might have paid already. A community charge payer who settled his bill in full the day that he received it will be re-billed for the new amount, but the second bill will give no indication of the sum that he has already paid. Previously, local authorities were allowed time before the implementation of capping to identify possible savings and to put their affairs in order.
Barnsley has always fared badly, even though its spending under all headings is below the national average. Its spending per head of the population for 1989–90 as identified by the Audit Commission was £525 per head, compared with the average metropolitan district figure of £509. However, its spending on education was £286 per head, compared with the metropolitan average of £320, and on social services £66 per head compared with £85. As to staffing per 1,000 population, Barnsley has 9·7 teachers compared with 11·42 for the average metropolitan district, and 21·53 staff of all kinds compared with the average of 24·54 per 1,000 population. How can the Secretary of State accuse Barnsley of being a high-spending authority when the Audit Commission's own figures show that its expenditure is below average in almost every category?
This year, Barnsley's expenditure would have increased from £115·5 million to £134·6 million. Inflation accounts for £11 million, including £3·5 million resulting from the Government's teacher pay awards. Barnsley's share of the joint authorities' funding following abolition of South Yorkshire county council will increase from 14 per cent. to 17 per cent.—another £4 million. There is a further £8·2 million additional spending. I shall not list all the categories, but some have been imposed by the

Government. They include accelerated debt repayments, capital grants that can no longer be credited to revenue, and the cost of implementing the poll tax itself.
Over the next 12 months, Barnsley will also have other special needs. Spending on education accounts for about 70 per cent. of Barnsley's total budget, so the likelihood is that any savings that must be made as a result of capping will come from education. That is at a time when the authority is desperately trying to improve its educational attainment. A new tertiary college due to come on stream in September could lose £1 million of funding, which will set it back from the outset and place students at a disadvantage. The savings that would have to be identified, were the charge capping implemented across the board, are some £4·95 million.
I refer the Minister to an article in The Guardian on 17 April which identified some of the problems in Barnsley. We were a little annoyed by the article because the picture shows a school which was earmarked for closure in 1986. The authority is trying to identify the real problems but The Guardian identified a school that was due to close as a result of rationalisation and not as a result of poll-tax capping.
The article goes into some detail about Barnsley's education spending problems. Local management of schools will be coming up this year, as will the extra cost of implementing the national curriculum. Each secondary pupil in Barnsley costs £1,470 as compared with the figure in Barnet of £1,600. Barnsley has the highest primary and secondary pupil-teacher ratios out of the 10 cluster authorities identified by the Audit Commission. We spend £42·80 on books and equipment for secondary pupils. Only three metropolitan districts spend less than that, and the average is £55. The average ratio of computers to pupils is 1:50, but Barnsley has 1:70. We have no modern language assistants employed by the authority. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) will confirm that that district employs 26. Educational achievement for post-16-year-olds is the lowest in the country, yet we are cutting money from Barnsley's budget.
I shall quickly run through the other problems. Barnsley still has 14 per cent. unemployment; we have tried to identify an industrial partnership with a major industrialist, but that has now been shelved because capping has meant that we do not have the money—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman has had his time.

Sir George Young: I hope that the hon. Member for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Illsley) will forgive me if I do not take up his points about Barnsley because it was a detailed speech on his constituency about which I obviously know nothing.
It is quite clear to me why the Labour party has chosen this subject today. It is a crude attempt to convert the unpopularity of the poll tax into votes on 3 May without giving any details of its own schemes. It is this week's Hong Kong. I have spent much time recently on the doorsteps of Ealing, and my constituents are not so naive as to fall for that. They realise that if they all went out on 3 May to vote Labour, the poll tax would still be there on 4 May and, what is far worse, they would have lumbered themselves with an administration which, however funded, would spend more than a Conservative administration and


over four years it would cost each of them at least £150 more, and the money would be spent on projects with which they disagreed. I am optimistic that in my constituency the Conservative party is poised to do well on 3 May.
The debate provides an opportunity for Conservative Members to analyse the difficulties posed by the poll tax·to ask why the matrons of Maidenhead have been marching·and to try to identify a way through.
There are three reasons why the poll tax is unpopular. First, it was introduced, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, West (Mr. Jones) has just pointed out, at a far higher level than its authors envisaged or people were led to expect. Secondly, any structural change, well meant or not so well meant, brings turbulence and a reaction against it. Thirdly, the tax is seen to be unfair because it is unrelated to the ability to pay. The impact of the first two problems will probably erode with time. The third reason is timeless and potentially lethal.
The Government are in a state of terminal schizophrenia about the question of ability to pay. On the one hand, they say that the community charge is linked to the ability to pay, and, on the other hand, they have set their face against linking the charge more directly to incomes, which are the best measurement of ability to pay.
At present, the community charge is no more linked to the ability to pay than local authority rents. I have never heard a Minister say that local authority rents are linked to the ability to pay. Indeed, they have claimed the opposite—that we are moving towards a system of market rents. Housing benefit takes the strain for those who cannot afford them. The existence of housing benefit for a minority does not mean that rents are linked to ability to pay; it means exactly the opposite. The same is true of the community charge. It is a flat-rate, local tax on being over 18. It is wholly unrelated to the ability to pay.
Community charge rebate is related to ability to pay, but to argue that, because rebates are available to those in one part of the income spectrum, the tax as a whole is related to ability to pay is nonsense.
Nor do I buy the argument that, because central Government pay half the cost of local government through the revenue support grant, and because that is funded through progressive taxation, it is legitimate to raise the rest through a flat-rate tax. On the contrary, because central Government fund their services through progressive taxation, it is even more illogical to ask local government to fund its services from a regressive flat-rate tax. It makes no sense to abolish the rates because the widow is paying the same as the four wage earners next door, and then to justify the new system by saying that those wage earners pay more for local services than the widow because they pay more in tax than she does.
The shift in the burden of taxation away from the better-off and on to the shoulders of the less-well-off is the fundamental objection to the poll tax. No arguments about rebates or revenue support grant meet that criticism head on. Until we meet it head on, we shall always be on the defensive.
Another reason why the charge is unpopular is its high incidence in relation to the forecast made when the legislation was going through. One solution advocated by some of my hon. Friends is to spray the problem with money. The sum which gets us to the starting block is £3 billion. That seems to me to be an un-Conservative and somewhat defeatist solution.
I put to one side the question whether the country can afford an extra £3 billion at the moment. Even if we could, it would be £3 billion of dead money, and we would have nothing to show for it—no new schools, hospitals or railway lines, no better benefits for the disabled and no more homes for the homeless and all the other projects that every hon. Member could find to spend money on. It would simply be a £3 billion funeral bill for the poll tax, not only next year but every year because we will never be able to get the money back without jacking up the tax to a level deemed to be unacceptable.
Such a solution does not solve the underlying problem, because we are still left with a system of funding local government in which we have manifested our total lack of confidence because it is unable to bear the burden of funding local services. A similar solution to transfer education or the police to the central taxpayer is an intellectually more honest argument, but it suffers from all the same drawbacks as the £3 billion I have mentioned and from further disadvantages.
I happen to believe in a plural, decentralised society, with decisions taken locally where possible and with local accountability. Local democracy is an integral part of our total democracy, subservient to Parliament but complementary to it. The more we centralise decisions, the more we move to a bureaucratic monochrome, unresponsive society—

Mr. Favell: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Sir George Young: No, I am sorry; I have not time.
That move seems to have nothing to do with Conservative philosophy.
Instead of saying that, because we have such a deeply unattractive means of funding local government, we must do more centrally, we should ask how we can fund local government so that we do not have to centralise any more so that we can continue to decentralise and push responsibility downwards.
What are we to do to put the funding of local government on a sound footing? Any solution must solve the political imperative that faces our party. The poll tax casts a shadow over our prospects at the next election. We have devised a system about which the gainers feel guilty and the losers feel livid.
The gloomy prospects are alleviated by two factors. The first is the turbulence factor caused by introducing a new tax. Much of the unpopularity of the tax is simply due to the change. Any new Government would have to deal with that turbulence in exactly the same way that we have to deal with it. In two years' time, the Labour party threatens to throw another large stone into that pond. It will find it has to answer many of the questions that we are having to answer now about gainers, losers and costs. The second factor is that the solution adopted at present by Opposition Members seems to me even nuttier than the poll tax.
I come to my own solution, which is totally unoriginal. I put it forward in an article in The Guardian in 1987 and the House voted on a derivative of it more than two years ago, when it was defeated by 25 votes. Many of my colleagues who voted against it then now wish that they had not. It starts from the present position, builds on the only strength of the poll tax over the rates—the


broadening of the base of local finance—and addresses its fatal weakness by moving away from a flat rate to a banded rate linked to ability to pay.
It does so without using PAYE, which would weaken the visibility of the tax, and without the town halls knowing all the details of our incomes, which would be obtrusive and expensive. It would do away with the bureaucracy of the community charge register, and it would not hound the poorest in society for a tax that they could not afford. It would involve town halls precepting individuals not on the rateable value of their properties but on their taxable incomes the previous year, allocated to one of a number of bands notified to the town hall by the Inland Revenue. That system is made infinitely more attractive by this year's move to the independent taxation of women.
Parliament can set all the parameters: the number of bands, whether there should be a maximum level, and so on. The details are for discussion. Other countries have exactly such a system. None of them has a poll tax. Such a solution would neutralise at a stroke the political disadvantage of the poll tax. The Opposition would find it difficult to denounce such a scheme and virtually impossible to threaten to repeal it.
With such eloquence as I can command, I urge the Government, in their forthcoming review, to examine the merits of such a scheme, which has a number of advantages.

Mr. Peter L. Pike: I do not intend to follow the line taken by the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), although he has criticised the unfair way in which the Government have introduced the poll tax. I want to refer to the speech made by the Secretary of State for the Environment. During the final 15 minutes of his speech he attacked the Opposition for not being prepared at this stage to declare exactly what is their alternative to the poll tax. I wish that we were able to do that. However, we must ensure that we provide a workable alternative to the poll tax that is cheap to collect and that is fair. We do not have civil servants to help us, so it is right that we should take time to produce a workable alternative.
After the Government had been in office for eight years, they decided to introduce the poll tax. They believed that it provided the solution to local government finance. However, they are now faced with all the problems that surround it. The Opposition have made it clear that they will ensure that the poorest people, who have to pay 20 per cent. of the poll tax, will receive a 100 per cent. rebate. That is a fundamental principle that will be enshrined in our proposals.
The Secretary of State referred to the higher-spending local authorities. That issue has been debated on many occasions. In the main, Labour-controlled local authorities are in areas of deprivation where the need to spend money is greatest. If we believe in democracy, we must allow democratically elected local authorities to determine what services ought to be provided. That is what local government is about. I shall always fight for that principle, but the Opposition are 100 per cent. committed to obtaining value for money when it comes to the provision of local authority services.
People have written to me saying that it is hypocritical of the Government to talk about accountability in connection with the poll tax when they are extending the right to vote to people who may have left the country up to 20 years ago. They make no contribution to this country in terms of taxes paid and in most cases have absolutely no intention of returning to live here.
In answer to a question I put earlier, the Secretary of State told me that the Government intend to make no change to the present system—that nearly all people must make a contribution to the provision of local services. According to a written answer that I obtained last week from the Secretary of State, the Government are not prepared to say what action they are prepared to take to deal with the problem of the poll tax failing to take account of ability to pay. If the Government had taken note of what the Opposition said in Standing Committee and on the Floor of the House when the Local Government Finance Bill was debated two years ago, that problem would not have arisen.
Thousands of people in my constituency and millions of people throughout the country cannot afford to pay the poll tax. I refer to those who are in receipt of too much benefit or whose earnings are at a level which means that they do not qualify for a rebate. The treasurer of Burnley borough council put it to me that, even if he wanted to waive collection from certain people on the ground of poverty, he would not be allowed to do so without going to the courts. He asked me why that power has not been granted to borough treasurers. He believes that they ought to be able to decide to waive the collection of poll tax where it would be foolish to try to collect it.
The Government have increased the savings limit to £16,000 before people are disqualified from receiving a rebate. I said at the time that the Government announced the change that they would have done far more for many more people if they had raised the lower limit of savings from £3,000 to £4,000, £5,000 or £6,000. As for special help for people who will be paying £156 more in poll tax than they paid last year in rates, the Government say that in Burnley the poll tax should be £166. A single person living alone, therefore, would have had to pay only £10 in rates last year to qualify for special help. Burnley was a low-rated area, but that is totally unrealistic.
I have met representatives of the chamber of trade in my constituency. They are concerned about many aspects of the uniform business rate. I intend to refer to one of those aspects: small shopkeepers who live over their shops. There has been a considerable increase in their rateable value. Despite the transitional protection, they will have to find more to cover that increase. In addition, they have to pay the poll tax. The average family in Burnley is £6 a week worse off under the poll tax, so people have less to spend in the corner shops. The elderly and the poorer members of the community depend on the corner shop. The Government pretend that they are the friend of the small shopkeeper and the small business, but in many instances small shopkeepers are not one-time or two-time losers; they are three-time losers on account of the way in which the uniform business rate operates.
The chamber of commerce has voiced its concern about many aspects of the uniform business rate and the poll tax. One point that has been made forcefully to me by chamber of commerce representatives is that, if employers are forced to deduct money from the wages of their employees because they have not paid the poll tax, it will cause an


industrial relations problem that employers do not want to have to deal with; they do not want to have to enforce, on behalf of the Government, this unfair legislation.
Finally, I want to look at Lancashire in a little more detail. On more than one occasion Lancashire county council informed the Secretary of State that it will receive £138 million less in Government grant this financial year than the amount it received in the last financial year.
Lancashire county council wrote to the Department of the Environment on 6 February stating:
the Government has adopted a new spending formula which expects Lancashire to spend less in real terms in 1990–91 than it would have done under the existing GREA formula".
On 22 November 1989, Burnley borough council wrote to me, stating:
a Standard Spending Assessment based on two factors cannot reflect the true spending needs of this or any other District Council.
It stresses that the standard spending assessment fails to take into account grants or contributions from county councils.
The Government have a long way to go to solve the problems of the poll tax. They have failed to show that they are prepared to make any positive response. The electorate will show their view next Thursday and will repeat it whenever the next general election is called.

Mr. Tony Favell: In common with my right hon. and hon. Friends and Opposition Members, let me make two suggestions to my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities, whom, I am glad to see in his place. First, he should not listen to the admonishments from the Opposition about the uniform business rate, which is a thoroughly decent measure. For far too long businesses have been driven out of such places as Liverpool, Manchester, Stockton and some parts of south London which are run by loony left councils and the people living there have suffered. It is thoroughly decent for the Government to ensure that businesses have the confidence to invest in those areas.
Secondly, if the standard spending assessments are to be refined—there is some force behind that argument—will my right hon. Friend consider the possibility of legislating to the effect that, if a council wishes to exceed its standard spending assessment, it should first have a local referendum so that people are consulted about whether they wish their council to spend on all the services which are continually suggested by Opposition parties?

Mr. Allen McKay: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Favell: No. I have only 10 minutes.
One would think from listening to Opposition Members, and one or two of my hon. Friends, that the community charge has no friends. It has a friend here. I am not alone in that.

Mr. Janman: I am a friend of the community charge.

Mr. Favell: My hon. Friend agrees with me.
I have a marginal constituency, and I realise that appealing to one or two people who have to pay a bit more puts my seat in jeopardy. I am prepared to do that because I believe that the community charge is good for the country and for my constituency.
The community charge has other friends. First, there are widows—everyone has forgotten about widows—who

have been driven out of their homes because in next-door houses three or four big wage earners are paying the same rates as they pay. My mother was driven out of her two-bedroomed bungalow in Sheffield, which she had received from my father's estate, because she simply could not afford to pay the rates. That is disgraceful. Deserted wives and those separated from their husbands are in exactly the same position. They might not be parading in Trafalgar square, but they are friends of the measure. There are also those who feel that everyone should contribute to local services. Local services involve giving as well as taking.
The Opposition have spotted a rich vein in young people aged 19 or 20 who are making no contribution to local services which they enjoy as much as anyone else. Students get local authority grants. Why should they not pay 20 per cent. towards their community charge? I see absolutely nothing wrong with that.
In recent years, young people have had a wonderful run. One has only to look at the pubs, the discotheques and the shops. The gear on sale is all for young people. It is not too early for them to learn that local services involve give as well as take.
Many people are friends of the community charge because they feel that everyone should contribute to local services. Many people, including many Conservative Members, feel that at long last local councils should be accountable to the people whom they serve. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said that he did not think it was possible and attacked us for trying to make local authorities accountable. One thing that his long speech made clear is that, if ever the Labour party got into power, it would not make local authorities accountable to the people whom they are meant to serve.
Local authorities do not serve the poor, the rich or any one section of the community; they are meant to serve everyone. In my surgery, the complaints about local authority services come not from the rich but from council house tenants who cannot get repairs done. They cannot get local authority staff to answer the telephone civilly, answer a letter or come round when they have problems. They come from council house tenants who wish to buy their homes and cannot even get a reply to their letters. They come from council house tenants who are living on estates where the council does not even bother to repair the pavements or collect the litter. They are not friends of the council. They want the council to be accountable. They are not in favour of the loony left councils in Liverpool and Manchester who buy votes from minority oddball groups.
The man in the street wants value for money from the council. He does not want the extra 1,000 employees whom Stockport council has taken on in the past three years. He does not want it to cost £400,000 merely to provide the wages of employees in the education department. He wants value for money. He wants services to be contracted out to people who can provide decent services. In Stockport recently, refuse collection was contracted out, saving £1·3 million a year. Why was that not done years ago if the local authority was worried about what it costs to maintain all the people who are meant to be working for the council?
During the 1980s, local authorities were exempt from what was going on elsewhere in the economy. Every shop, office, factory, hotel or business has had to provide more with fewer people, but at the town halls the party has gone on.
Anthony Crosland spoke in Manchester in May 1975. He appealed to the patriotism of local authorities. He said, "The party's over." The party was not over then, it has not been over since, and it never will be until the town halls are made accountable. I appeal to the few faint hearts among Conservative Members to recognise that town halls must be accountable. That is what the people want. I am completely behind the community charge and, come the next election, we will see that the majority of people in Britain are, too.

Mr. George Galloway: The speech of the hon. Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) was breathtaking in its simplicity. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not follow him down the byways that he travelled.
While you were here, Mr. Speaker, and perhaps even more after you left, there was an extraordinary amount of laughter from Conservative Members. At first I thought that they had lunched rather well, but then I saw friends of mine on the Conservative Benches who scarcely lunch at all so I realised that it could not be that. For a group of sailors sitting atop a flagship which is simultaneously burning and holed below the water line, I found it an extraordinary performance. Given the current opinion polls, I thought that it was demob happiness, but then I concluded that it was nervous laughter as the Conservative party faces the prospect of judgment by the electorate next Thursday.
Amid all the public school hilarity, there was no sense of the tremendous forces at work in response to the poll tax. The only Conservative Member to speak with any sense so far—the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young)—talked about the forces that have moved the matrons of Maidenhead on to the streets. Others mentioned the forces that have moved the burghers of Bath to call a general strike of tradespeople and shopkeepers in protest at what Conservative Members found so funny this afternoon.
Perhaps it was sense of dread as they watched the Labour by-election victories in such places as Cornwall and Devon, where Labour has not won seats for several generations that made Conservative Members laugh; perhaps it was the amendment in the name of the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) which was concentrating their minds and making them so nervous; perhaps it was the resonance that the scarcely covert campaign of the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) is finding in Tory ranks around the country that made them nervous. If they are not nervous, and the laughter was genuinely careless, Conservative Members are behaving like turkeys voting for an early Christmas.
The essence of the first two hours of this debate was summed up by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) in a sentence. He said that there was a sense of complacency, and that Parliament was addressing a subject which apparently dealt only with England. There was no appreciation of the fact that this is year two of the poll tax for the people of Scotland; there was no sense of Conservative Members' having grasped the popular revolt and uprising that is occurring in Scotland—statistics that

I shall give in a minute—in opposition to the poll tax; nor did the House seem to understand the deep sense of offence felt in Scotland at the unseemly scramble by Conservative Members to patch up this or that amendment to try to make the scheme more palatable.
For the 12 months in which the poll tax was being rammed down the throats of the people of Scotland, Conservative Members did not want to know: that includes the right hon. Member for Henley, who voted for the poll tax to be imposed in Scotland but has latterly found some sense of opposition to it. There was no sense of the pain felt by hundreds of thousands of people in Scotland.
I do not think that Conservative Members are aware that, in Glasgow alone, 107,000 people have been issued with summary warrants because they are so far in arrears with their poll tax. Some people—like me—are refusing to pay out of a sense of solidarity with the far greater number who cannot pay their poll tax bills—107,000 in the city of Glasgow.

Mr. Janman: Labour charges.

Mr. Galloway: The hon. Gentleman says "Labour charges." Even he would not regard Glasgow district council or Strathclyde regional council as loony left.

Mr. Janman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Galloway: I do not have time.
Some 400,000 people in Strathclyde region—nearly a quarter of the population—have been issued with summary warrants because they are so far in arrears with their poll tax payments; some 200,000 people in the Lothians—many in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh—have been issued with summary warrants. Strathclyde regional council has a financial shortfall of £100 million.
The worst is yet to come. The benefit arrestments have begun to arrive at the Department of Social Security offices in Scotland. Any day now, clerks in those offices will be asked to axe the poll tax out of the social security benefits of people whom the Government regard as on the brink of absolute poverty—at subsistence level. They will have part of their benefit seized to pay the poll tax. Is that what Conservative Members find so funny? Some 15,000 people in Strathclyde region have left the electoral register in the past 12 months because they cannot pay the poll tax; children are leaving the parental home because their mums and dads cannot pay the poll tax. Conservative Members find it all so funny.
In an interview with the Scottish Daily Express—what else?—the Prime Minister said that people such as me who are refusing to pay the poll tax for reasons of solidarity are anarchists and shirkers. That is rich coming from a woman who is seeking to abolish the state more completely than any anarchist could. If she has ever done a real job, it was a long time ago.

Mr. Holt: What have you done?

Mr. Galloway: I have worked hard all my life with my hands, and not as a bookie's runner. I am not an anarchist or a shirker. I am not even especially left wing. I am not in the Campaign group or the Tribune group. However, I am standing alongside the hundreds of thousands in Scotland who cannot pay the poll tax that Conservative Members find so funny.
I started my speech with a watery metaphor, and I shall finish with one: the Tory flagship is beginning to take on one hell of a resemblance to the Titanic, and Ministers are doing little more than rearranging the deckchairs.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: Is it not a fact that people on social security receive rebates of up to 80 per cent., and that social security was upped to take account of the national average of the 20 per cent. level? I attended this debate because I wanted to know Labour's policy, but its position remains gloriously unclear. The right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) does not yet have a policy—a consistent record; the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) has a policy, already known as the roof tax, the details of which are still confidential; and the hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) has the figures, which he believes should be shown to the local voters of Scotland before their regional elections on Thursday week.
Perhaps wisely, those hon. Members did not want to let the Scottish people into the details of the secret before their votes were in the ballot box. I say "wisely" because this morning they announced some figures that did not add up. Apparently, however, they intend to use Scotland as a test-bed for the roof tax before extending it to England and Wales.
I was curious to know what impact the roof tax would have on my constituents in Gravesham. Given the current precepts from Gravesham borough council and Kent county council, the roof tax would be as follows: on a house valued at £30,000—there are few, if any, in Gravesham—it would be £234; on one valued at £80,000 it would be £625, which is more than double the current community charge; and on one valued at £120,000—there are many in my south-eastern constituency—the tax would be no less than £936, and so upwards.
Both the Labour and Liberal parties have enthused about a local income tax. On the same basis as precepts, Gravesham people would pay a local income tax of 5·1 in the pound from the first £1 of their income. That is based on the spending of careful Conservative authorities. If Gravesham council were Labour-controlled, the bills would he far higher; for example, local people are paying a community charge of £293, whereas people in Labour-controlled Thurrock, just across the Thames, are suffering a charge of no less than £414.
Opposition Members claim that there is no significant difference in the precept between Labour and Conservative authorities. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) told us that in the debate on community charge capping on 3 April. He went further in a Labour party press release on 18 April, when he said:
The average poll tax in Conservative and Labour councils hardly differs.
Really? There is a marked difference in the community charges of Conservative and Labour areas.
Statistics compiled by the Library show that the average community charge of districts that have Conservative unitary authorities—London or metropolitan boroughs—or are under Conservative shire county and district councils, of which there are 95, is £333. In Labour-controlled areas, of which, sadly, there are 73, local people suffer an average community charge of £384. Although £51 may not be a lot for the hon. Member for Dagenham, it certainly is for most people, particularly

when the services of Labour councils are usually no better and are frequently worse than those from Conservative councils.
In the three similar Liberal-controlled districts, the average community charge is £360, an effective surcharge of £27 for the rarity value of Liberal control.
Those figures mask the reality. We forget too easily the impact of the safety net, whereby, perhaps because of the misguided generosity of the Government, by and large, residents of prudent Conservative authorities are obliged to subsidise the residents of wasteful Labour authorities. If those surcharges and handouts are stripped out. the arithmetological inexactitude of the hon. Member for Dagenham almost becomes a case for reference to the Advertising Standards Authority.
Totally Conservative areas are charging an average of £305, compared with the rip-off in totally Labour areas of £412—a differential of no less than £107 per head for the privilege of voting Labour. Totally Liberal areas are charging £392—a Liberal addition of £87 compared with Conservative areas. Those raw figures show the result of the "party that can". They certainly can. They can take local people's money in grand style.
I have some further examples of rip-offs. Were it not for the generosity of the Government's safety net, people in the London borough of Greenwich would be paying £620. The rest of us are subsidising Greenwich residents by no less than £212 per head, just because they have a traditionally wasteful Labour council. Lambeth's real rip-off is £575, not the £548 that it tried to levy on local people. Southwark would have had to charge £550 were it not for our subsidy of £160, and Hammersmith and Fulham would have had to charge £535 but for our subsidy of £111. One could go on and on. The only consistent link between those councils is their tradition of Labour dominance.
Opposition Members like to claim that Conservative authorities have high charges. Many of those charges are levied after the addition of hefty contributions to the safety net. A full £75 is paid by every man and woman in districts such as Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Wokingham, South Buckinghamshire and Chiltern. In Gravesham district, people are being levied £15. The consistent thread between those contributing authorities is that they are Conservative-controlled, but scant thanks for that money is forthcoming from the Labour party.
We are debating the largest ever reform of local government finance and taxation. There are bound to be teething troubles and inequities when introducing such a vast reform, as there are in this case. I welcome the undertaking given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to consider those anomalies, and refer him to some that should be considered. They include the fairness of a full levy on non-working wives and mothers. Should we be imposing a equal levy on such people, who are not earning but who are contributing to the future of the nation by bringing up our children?
Should there be unequal treatment of the old and infirm in retirement homes and of those who remain in their own homes, frequently cared for by relatives with the support of community care?
Are there not injustices in vacant homes incurring standard community charge, occasioned by death and probate or by working away from home, and in the


transition between lets of accommodation rented out by landlords, frequently widows, with only one additional property?
We must address such anomalies, and we have this year to get them right. We should not be panicked by the scaremongering of the Labour party, which is exploiting people's natural fears and understandable dislike of tax. Local government is inevitably expensive and we should not hide that from our constituents, but nor should we hide the record of the parties on value for the money taken.
The Labour party may be enjoying itself at the moment, but the British people are not fools and they will look at the facts. When they see the facts of the Labour party's proposals, when it has the courage to divulge them, the grins will be wiped from Labour Members' faces.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: The Labour party made it abundantly clear when the poll tax legislation was being considered by the House that it did not want the poll tax at any price and that it did not want to gain political advantage from it. That point was made repeatedly, is on the record and still stands today.
I apologise to the Front-Bench spokesmen for missing most of their speeches, but that was because of my attendance at the Public Accounts Committee.
There is not a single problem raised about the implementation of the poll tax by hon. Members and people outside the House about which a warning has not been given. Warnings were given when the House was considering the legislation in 1987 and 1988. The Government published warnings in their 1981 Green Paper, "Alternatives To Domestic Rates". Everything that could go wrong with the poll tax is listed in chapter 7 of that Command Paper, yet the Government still proceeded with it. They cannot say that they were not warned, and because of that we make no apology for reaping the political reward of opposing this unfair, immoral and undemocratic tax.
The tax cannot be administered—that was made clear by the Government in the Green Paper and in the White Paper that followed in 1983—as a person tax. Last Friday morning, I visited Birmingham's poll tax office. People with queries were queuing outside it, but inside were professional local government officers doing their best to administer the law, and a pile of envelopes in cardboard boxes at least the size of the Table of the House. That was the returned mail for the Wednesday after Easter of poll tax bills not received by citizens of Birmingham. There must have been tens of thousands of envelopes. It will not be possible to keep track of people on a daily basis, but every one of those envelopes must be chased up. It will be almost impossible to administer the tax in that way, as we said at the time.
It is disappointing that I cannot find Tories in Birmingham to defend the tax. I have four meetings planned in my constituency between tomorrow and Monday night, not all of which will be party-political platforms. Tories have been invited to send representatives to each of those meetings, but no one can be found to defend the poll tax. That has happened consistently this year.
The poll tax will cause massive dislocation of family incomes, as I have said repeatedly on the House, as those on less than average earnings pay more so that those on above average earnings can pay less. My constituency is the largest in Birmingham; three quarters of it is outer suburbs and a quarter inner city, but all areas are losers. They will pay £10 million more in poll tax than they would have paid in rates, even if the rates had increased by 12 per cent.
The people of Perry Barr do not have a spare £10 million. They will go without food and fuel to pay their poll tax bills, and as a result their mental and physical health will deteriorate. I have seen the haunted look in people's eyes when it has suddenly dawned on them how much they will have to pay now that the bills have dropped through their letter boxes. Panic is setting in among ordinary people on ordinary incomes, living in ordinary streets in ordinary dwellings, who cannot afford to pay these extra amounts which are way above the rate demands.
This is a legal tax, but the legislation was passed undemocratically in the House by the use of guillotine. I checked out the Tory Members who rammed this tax through the House. The people who backed the Tory Members who forced through the final vote on the amendment of the hon. Member for Hampshire, East (Mr. Mates) on 18 April 1988 when the Government's majority was the lowest, at 25, comprised 21 per cent. of the electorate and 29 per cent. of those who voted in a general election. There is no doubt about it: it is an undemocratic tax.
There must be criteria for fair taxation. No Labour Member would argue that we should not have taxes—I would disown someone who did. Taxes are part of the community kitty. We cannot all have our own private facilities, but the criteria must be clear. Taxes must be practical—the poll tax is not. Taxes must be fair and must make those who take local expenditure decisions properly accountable—the poll tax has nothing to do with local accountability. The costs of administration and collection must be kept within acceptable limits—the poll tax is running at three times, not twice, the level of the rates. That is not acceptable.
Taxes must encourage proper financial control. I accept that a tax must be suitable for all tiers of local government. It must stand the test of time. Any tax that cannot stand the test of time will be unworkable and unworked, because those who have the duty to work it know that it will not last, inevitably leaving problems in its wake. Those are the Tory Government's criteria, which were laid down in their 1981 Green Paper. The poll tax does not meet one of them.
I do not want my party to compete with the Government, saying, "Our system will have more people on rebates than yours." I should like a system in which no one is on rebates. No one gets rebates on income tax, because a person does not pay it unless his or her income justifies the payment. The more income one has, the more tax one pays.
The speech of the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) will be telling. I suspect that the Government will move somehow to adopt a banded system. That is their only escape route. They will not go back to a property tax and they will not want a fully local income tax. Our view is that property should carry taxation—the occupation of property should carry taxation—and whether that money is used for local government or


national Government expenditure does not matter. I do not believe that, without the tax, property prices would be forced up, but that is not a good thing anyway.
I shall defend one, two or three taxes for local government, provided they meet the criterion of fairness. No one likes paying taxes, but people will object less to paying fair taxes than to paying unfair taxes. It does not matter whether the taxes are a mixture of property tax and income tax or whether we go the whole way and have a banded system or a fully fledged income tax. Property should carry a tax, and probably not on its value—a tax on the size of the floor area that it occupies, or even on site value. That is my public position, and I make it clear to my colleagues.
Such a system can be achieved in several ways. There is nothing unique about it, because virtually every means that one can imagine operates administratively perfectly in most other countries that use these systems. We have become hung up on this issue. We should discuss how to finance local government and, from my party's point of view, how to replace the poll tax, which must go.
I freely admit that I would prefer a mixture of taxes based on property and on income. Both can be seen to be fair and practical. Neither need cost a fortune to collect. Above all, they would not produce a massive impost and dislocation of family incomes. They would not drive people further into poverty and ill-health, as the poll tax will do, and that is why I vehemently oppose it.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: Not for the first time, I find myself very much in agreement with much of what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) said. As he probably knows, I have never supported this tax. I did not vote for it when it was introduced in Scotland. I have never voted for it and have voted against it on crucial occasions.
The problem with this tax is that, to quote a recent metaphor, it fails the cricket test. This tax is fundamentally unfair and people in this country like fair play. It is not cricket. The system must be significantly amended if it is to become acceptable to people: to the elderly couple who come to my surgery and ask, "Mr. Cormack, do I give up my holiday or my car?"; to the young husband who says, "We had planned for my wife to stay at home and bring up the child, giving up her job, but now she does not think that she can afford to do so"; to the teacher who is moving into my constituency and who, because the property market is sluggish, is paying poll tax on two properties, one of which is empty; and to the vicar with a small cottage in the country which happens to be in a Labour-controlled local authority area—Labour Members may not like this point—who will have to pay a double charge, as the standard charge on a property which he will seldom occupy and which is the only property that he owns. That is unfair.
It is unfair also that a shopkeeper who is trying to provide a service in a rural community faces the problem of mixed hereditament and has to pay poll tax and the business rate. Encapsulating the unfairness of the tax is the most unfair example of all—two people in my constituency living within about 500 yd of each other, one in a mobile home and the other in a house worth £500,000, each having to pay the same. That is not fair and never could be. It is regressive taxation of the worst kind.
That is why I have consistently opposed the poll tax. I have done so not because I believe that the adult wage-earner should not make a contribution—he or she should. On three occasions I introduced a rating reform Bill which would have made every adult wage-earner pay a contribution. I had the great distinction of having among my supporters at least twice my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), who is in the Chamber, and on one occasion my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. If we had moved along those lines, I do not think that anyone with a sense of fair play could conceivably have objected. But we have done something that flies in the face of our party's principles and beliefs, which have evolved over centuries. We must do something about it.
I am a realist. I fully accept that we shall not be able to abolish the charge or repeal the legislation and that we must make the system work. There are two ways in which we can do that. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities to address himself to them. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made a magnificent speech, but he did not address himself sufficiently to the seriousness of the situation. I am not flannelling when I say that I have a high regard for my hon. Friend the Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. They are Ministers who can listen. It is imperative for them and for this country's future that they do.
It is important that we look at the admirable solution suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who has been a consistent and doughty opponent of the charge, and who talked about banding. If that were brought in, there would be a reflection of the ability to pay, and the fundamental "it's not cricket" response of so many of our constituents would be dealt with.
The other solution is one that I have advocated on many occasions with the eloquent support of my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North. It is to transfer the burden of education, or at least of teachers' salaries, to the Exchequer. I am aware that that is not a simple solution and that the money must be found from somewhere, but the Chancellor of the Exchequer has many more opportunities of raising money than the one tax that we are discussing.
If the community charge is to remain a flat rate tax, like the car tax or the televison licence—I do not suggest that they are analagous and no one should think I do—it must be at a low level which is not a burdensome and cruel imposition on people. If education, were taken out, or just teachers' salaries, leaving administration to local authorities and thus a degree of local authority control, the tax could be reduced significantly. It is impossible to do proper calculations, but I have received figures from the Library today showing that a reduction of about £150 would probably be fairly common. That is based on the Government's own basic figure of £370. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has all the resources at his command and could probably tell us just what a significant reduction there would be.
One of the solutions that I have mentioned must be adopted. It is no good tinkering at the edges or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Acton said, throwing money at the problem. If the Government throw in another £3 billion next year, it will be £3 billion the year after and £3 billion the year after that. That will not tackle the root problem.


It will merely mask accountability which, after all, was one of the fundamental reasons why the Government introduced it in the first place.
We should also bear it in mind that education is increasingly a national service. We have a national curriculum and more schools are beginning to consider opting out of local authority control. Also, teachers' salaries are set at national level. Local authorities cannot decide that they will not pay a certain salary. And with declining school rolls in the immediate future, education is the one major service from which fewer people will directly benefit in any given local authority area.
For all the reasons that I have given, this solution should be carefully considered. I know that it is not a simple or perfect solution. Like the Irishman, I should not have started from here. I should not have brought in this wretched tax in the first place. However, we are landed with it and we must make it workable and fair. If we do not—I direct my remarks particularly to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench—all the fine achievements of the Government over the past 11 years, and there have been many, will be in jeopardy. The tax will join ship money, the stamp duty and all the other taxes which so incensed people that they turned on those who brought them in. I do not wish to see the Government, whom I support and am proud to support, brought down by a fiscal nonsensical introduction which, if it is not significantly amended, will always be associated with this Government and will tarnish their reputation in history.

Mr. Lawrence Cunliffe: First, I record my disapproval of the time spent by the Front-Bench teams today. They took one hour 50 minutes for their opening speeches, which deprived Back Benchers of debating time. I speak from authority as someone with eight years' experience as a senior Whip defending the interests of Back Benchers against Privy Councillors, prima donnas and alleged Front-Bench seniority. It is distasteful that the Front Benchers became so involved that they practically doubled the time usually taken for the opening speeches.
Time and again during the past three years, before setting any rate, my local authority of Wigan has presented to Government officials a team of Members of Parliament and local government officers. We have done so religiously for three consecutive years. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope) was present on those occasions. We clearly and methodically presented our financial slate to the Minister and his civil servants. We proved that Wigan borough council was a wise and prudent spender of its people's moneys.
We were then described as a wreckless, irrational spender trying to prove a distorted political point. I ask the House to consider that I have a majority of 17,000 and the other three Members of Parliament within that area have majorities of 21,000, 16,500 and roughly 17,000. Can anyone seriously believe that we would want to make a political point in dealing with ordinary people's money and accountability to them? That is sheer nonsense. I reiterate that that label cannot be justified and I hope to show the House why.
All the figures had been submitted to the Department, first in writing and then orally. This year, the team that came to see the Minister included the leader of the Conservative group on Wigan council, and the Liberal leader. The group was a cross-section of the political parties on the council. We all agree unanimously on the submissions that we made. What happened to us? We were charge-capped to the extent of £10 million, and 1,000 local government jobs were put at risk. That was the prize for playing by the Queensberry rules and submitting the figures in advance.
Councils are penalised for being open, frank and democratic and putting their facts before the Government. I hope to show why I claim that there has been discrimination and victimisation against a Labour-controlled authority which attempted to come clean and play by the Queensberry rules.
With the exception of education, Wigan spends 5 per cent. less on all its services than any other council in the Greater Manchester area or any metropolitan district. The borough had the 29th lowest of 36 standard spending assessments for metropolitan districts. The Greater Manchester region, of which we are part, had an average 6·1 per cent. increase in its SSA, compared to the GRE figure for 1989–90. The average metropolitan district increase is 7·3 per cent. What is Wigan's? It is 0·06 per cent. We are penalised and put at the bottom of the relegation zone as we have been for some years, no matter which formula we worked under. Our SSA is £113 per head, again below the Greater Manchester average, and £118 below the average for all metropolitan districts.
What do we have to do to prove to the Minister that we are good housekeepers? Accountability has always been built into the system. Let us compare Wigan with Wandsworth, Westminster or Windsor which had a budget overshoot of £159 without being charge-capped. Wigan is permitted to spend £806 per head against Westminster's £1,486 per head. There is no comparison. Whether or not people like the north-south argument, we shall consistently perpetuate that imbalance and it will be a sore between all parties, which will be angry at the imbalances and unequal treatment meted out in the north and this part of the south. I make that comment, not as a political point, but to show that there must be concern and anxiety that such imbalances exist.
I said that, in 1987, 1988, 1989 and 1990, we came to the Minister. An independent view can be seen in The Economist, which claimed that Wigan was Britain's most efficient council. It states:
Almost 5 per cent. of the London boroughs' council dwellings were empty in April 1986, three times the Wigan figure".
It also said that housing management costs in London worked out at £250 per dwelling, against £70 for Wigan, and tenants in London paid less than 22 per cent. of total housing costs, against Wigan's 36 per cent. It continued:
The share of costs met from rates more than doubled to 12 per cent., three times the Wigan level.
Those were the figures for the London boroughs. I shall come to a famous borough later. I see that the hon. Member for Itchen is smiling. That famous borough was subsidised by about 17 per cent., and Wigan got nothing. The Economist's independent survey showed that. Wigan is not the only example. The Londoners relied on central Government grants for 80 per cent. of their spending.


Wigan is quite a proficient council with professional standards, but we got only 50 per cent., compared with the 80 per cent. received by the borough that I mentioned.
We talk in compassionate terms about children's homes, which are a serious issue. In Wigan, children's homes cost less than £10,000 per child in care, whereas in London boroughs they cost £13,000. On minor roads, £8,500 per kilometre is spent in London, and in Wigan only £3,750.
Which was the rogue borough? It was Tory Wandsworth. The Economist said:
And which, you may wonder, is this wastrel borough? Or, if your politics are different, this truly socialist one? In fact, the borough concerned is neither. It is the radical-Tory Wandsworth, the model of an efficient, market-orientated
classic example of pure local government administration and accountability. If that is the case, I have a super Wigan, as against that sort of authority. The Under-Secretary won his spurs as leader of Wandsworth council.
Last week, most hon. Members received a booklet about the community charge issued by the Department of the Environment which deals with the community charge and rents. It is well-designed and clear and distinctive. This weekend, when I went back to my constituency, I was met with a delegation of tenants of rented property. They said, "Could we put it to you that we expect our rents to be dropped accordingly? The rate was £7 per week.

Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. I regret that I shall have to call the hon. Gentleman to order. His 10 minutes are up.

Mr. Cunliffe: I have had to rush my speech, when I had the common courtesy earlier not to intervene in the speeches of other right hon. and hon. Members.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I must be strict and impose the Standing Order.

Mr. Bill Walker: I shall not follow the example of the hon. Member for Leigh (Mr. Cunliffe) and I shall not challenge any ruling that you give me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I intend to speak about Scotland. I hope that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) was not suggesting that Conservative Members knew nothing about work. I am sure that he will agree that that is not so.
There is a good reason why we should consider Scotland. In the first year of operation of the community charge in Scotland, the added increase in local authority expenditure was more than double the inflation rate. That followed substantial increases in local government grant settlements. I expect that sounds vaguely familiar to hon. Members from England. The community charge is in its second year in Scotland, and this year is the year of regional elections in Scotland, and 20 councils have spending plans which are the same, or below, those of last year, and the remainder have estimates at about, or just below, the inflation rate. That shows that at least the local accountability element is working. Therefore, a major aspect of the community charge in Scotland can be said to be working.
On Monday 19 March, the Scottish Grand Committee met in Edinburgh. The matter for debate that day was local government finance—the community charge, or poll tax as it has come to be known. That was the first day that the Scottish Grand Committee was televised, and not one

individual came to demonstrate about a matter that, according to some of the interventions that we have heard, has been inciting people to lawlessness. Even more interesting, that was the first and only occasion on which there had not been a demonstration when the Grand Committee was meeting in the old high school building in Edinburgh. At every previous sitting of the Committee in Edinburgh there had been demonstrations outside, but there were no demonstrations against the poll tax.
That is concrete evidence that the people of Scotland have substantially accepted, as much as people ever accept the payment of tax, that the community charge is the best means of paying for the top-up figure of local government expenditure. The bulk of such expenditure is paid by central taxation and non-domestic ratepayers. We are talking about a top-up figure, not total expenditure.
It seems that, certainly in Tayside, the regional assessors—those responsible in Scotland for the non-domestic rates—have produced valuations in my constituency that lack consistency and fail to make sense. There is nothing new about that; we had the problem before, which led us to the community charge. That problem, combined with the rates and the rate valuation, made it impossible for the Government of the day to continue with that.
In an answer given to me today, I note that in Angus the combined rate poundage of district and region in 1989–90 is 72·2p, and in 1990–91 it should be—note the reduction—53·6p. In Perthshire, the respective figures are 72·7p and 54p. Therefore, provided the valuations are sensible, the cash paid for non-domestic rates in 1990–91 should not be penal. I shall wait and see because I know from experience that the valuations are, once again, likely to have gone bananas.
What of the alternatives? Today the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) failed to answer the question that I put to him, deliberately avoiding it and saying that he would discuss Scotland later. He did that because Labour's proposals for Scotland—the roof tax—have been clearly outlined. The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) keeps telling us that we will get the details long before 3 May, but we got part of the details today. Not only did the hon. Member for Dagenham not tell us about Labour's proposals for England and Wales; he failed to endorse the statement made by Labour in Scotland today, which is not surprising. He had probably been advised about the shambles in Scotland, where the only figure given was for a typical couple in an average house—it would have been £487 last year. Any inspection of this figure will show that, allowing for inflation, let alone anything else, it is complete nonsense relative to last year's rates. So much was made clear at the meeting.
As reported on the tapes, when questioned about other properties, the Labour party in Scotland could give no answers because it has not thought through or worked through the proposals. So the Leader of the Opposition tells the world that there is little support for a tax based on property values, while the shadow Secretary of State for the Environment fails to explain or endorse the statements made in Scotland. All this means that Labour is determined to use Scotland as a guinea pig. Add to that Labour's plans for the rural economy in Scotland and its hidden agenda, which includes rates on farmland, on woodland and on farm buildings, and the compulsory purchase of estates and holiday homes, and it becomes


clear how exciting the prospects for Scotland are. Property values will plunge and firms will be run at a loss to avoid payment of non-domestic rates. And there is more to come.
I turn now to local income tax, which is the SNP's and Liberal Democrats' recipe for the top-up figure. I note that not a single representative of those parties is present in the Chamber. I have an admission to make: for two years I tried to make a local income tax work and I could not make it work in Scotland at that time because I did not live and work in the same place. For example, I live in Blairgowrie, I work in London and my tax office is in Cardiff. Not all tax offices are computerised so that they can swap information.
This was only one of the problems. Sparsity of population in Scotland was another. The latest figures published in column 1023 of the Official Report on 19 April clearly show what that means. A single person on Scottish average earnings would be required to pay in local income tax £812 in Angus and £828 in Perthshire. He would be required to pay £900 in Dundee. If such a tax were ever introduced, it would clear the highlands of Scotland in a way never achieved during the clearances.
I know that there are flaws and weaknesses in the Government's proposals, but I have spent most of my life in Parliament dealing with anomalies in the rates. It would be astonishing if we brought in a local government tax that did not contain anomalies. One of our jobs is to ensure that they are removed, and I have every confidence that Treasury Ministers will do just that.

Mrs. Alice Mahon: I was a little disturbed when the debate began with the noisy and hysterical reaction from Conservative Members, which seemed to strike a panicky note. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) made an excellent speech in the face of all that unruly panic. He rightly referred to the undemocratic nature of the poll tax and to the considerable falling off in the numbers of those on the register—15,000 in Strathclyde alone.
The poll tax is not only unfair, it is anti-democratic and it lacks any democratic legitimacy. It is nonsense to say that the British people voted for it. The Tory manifesto for the last election, the most detailed in post-war history at about 25,000 words, contained 82 on the poll tax. The Government smuggled it past the electorate and then, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) said, they rammed it through the House.
My local authority, Calderdale, was 34th from the bottom of the league, with a very low poll tax of £297—yet it is to be poll tax-capped. Over the past 10 years, Calderdale has struggled to maintain and improve essential services while the Government have taken away more and more of its grant. Now we are told that we are profligate and not fit to set a budget. That is highly insulting to the hard-working, decent councillors who give up many hours of unpaid time because they are dedicated to the people of Halifax and Calderdale.
Why was our standard spending assessment set at 5 per cent. above inflation when the average for metropolitan authorities was 11 per cent.? It is sheer irresponsibility to poll tax-cap an authority such as ours and the Minister

must know that his actions will force Calderdale to make millions of pounds' worth of cuts in services, which will hurt our area. We cannot make such cuts without seriously damaging services. We cannot get away with fringe cuts—there is no fat to cut. We are a small, moderate district authority, built up from a very low rate base, and our spending goes on real services. I defy the Minister to come and show me where there is waste.
The voluntary sector in Calderdale is worried. The citizens advice bureaux and many bodies like them which receive grants are extremely anxious. Of course, their grants have increased over the years because they have had to expand their services, given the great problems that the Government have created. The massive growth in poverty over which the Government have presided, the housing crisis, the huge build-up of personal debt and he cuts in benefit and in the NHS have inevitably led to a growth in the budget of a caring local authority. One voluntary sector body that comes to mind about which I feel strongly is the Crossroads scheme, an excellent scheme in Calderdale. Many letters in the local press have supported it, yet it is worried about cuts in its grant that might result from capping. Crossroads is a cheap but valuable service that relieves carers who look after frail people in the community. Both it and the home help service are worried, as are people who work in old people's homes.
The Secretary of State visited Halifax yesterday. As I said when raising an earlier point of order, he crept in like a thief in the night without telling anybody that he was going there. The first I knew of his visit was when I saw a letter on the notice board saying that he was to visit Halifax yesterday. That was discourteous, which was why I challenged him about it.
The right hon. Gentleman told the press yesterday that he was protecting the people of Calderdale by capping the poll tax. He visited the richest area in Halifax, Savile park. He went there to support local Tories who were launching their local government election campaign. Those local Tories said that people in Halifax were not concerned about the poll tax and that dog dirt was more of a problem. So on the day when my council was in court applying for judicial review to protect valuable services such as Crossroads, the Minister was making dog dirt his priority. I am concerned about dogs fouling the pavements, but such action on the part of the Secretary of State is beyond the pale.
In his cheap, knockabout speech, the Minister did not tell the House about the teachers who lobbied him yesterday and who told him that if he went ahead with his cuts they would put education back 15 years in Halifax. We still do not have a comprehensive education system in Halifax and to set the clock back another 15 years is unthinkable.
The Secretary of State recently accepted a system for local financial management of schools. He said that it was a good system, but is he now about to tell teachers and administrators to cut their budgets? How will he justify that? Will he tell us how many teachers and ancillary workers will be lost from the schools in which £5·6 million of cuts have to be made? The National Association of Head Teachers is considering challenging the Government in court, and no hon. Member can tell me that that association represents the loony left.
Calderdale is a large geographical area with a small population and our services are expensive to provide. That is common sense. We kept our poll tax down and, as I said,


we were 34th from the bottom of the list. The poll tax is nothing more than an act of violence perpetrated by the rich and powerful against those who have very little. I do not enjoy seeing pensioners crying in my surgery and saying that they have to take sleeping pills at night because they are anxious and do not know how they will find an extra £3 or £4 a week. To someone on a low income, such a sum can be a devastating blow to a budget.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) I am taking a non-payment stand. I see from The Guardian last week that three Anglican bishops, a Roman Catholic bishop and five non-conformist leaders think that it is a good act of conscience on behalf of the poor. I support my people who cannot pay and I throw down a challenge to the Minister and to Conservative Members. They have been vocal in asking about our plans. What do they intend to do about the people who cannot pay? At what level of poverty are they prepared to come in and help such people? I know what I shall do.
The rich can always avoid taxes that they do not like, and I am quite sure that many hon. Members have lawyers and accountants to help them to avoid such taxes. The poor do not have that option, and in the face of a Government who simply refuse to listen I am proud to take a non-payment stand. With poll tax capping, the Secretary of State has acted in the best traditions of Mussolini. He is a town-hall Mussolini. It grieves me to say it, but I would not be disappointed if he ended up meeting the same fate.

Mr. Den Dover: The community charge has my wholehearted support. The principle is accepted on the doorsteps in Lancashire, but we have to look carefully at the rules and regulations that apply to the charge. The first answer at Question Time today gave the impression that we are not considering any changes to the regulations. I hope that the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities is following the debate and that he will look carefully at the rules and regulations before setting the rate of community charge for next year and the rules that apply to it. The main benefits of this debate are that it highlights the unfairnesses in the new tax and that we can make constructive proposals about what could or should be done.
We changed the taxation system this year so that women are taxed separately. I fully support that move. Therefore, why is it necessary to make husband and wife jointly and severally liable for the community charge? That does not make sense. Some people have said that it is related to housing benefit or social security payments, but when introducing a major tax such as this we should treat it as an individual charge and honour that treatment in all its terms. An unemployed wife who is taxed separately from her husband who may be earning £15,000 or £20,000 should receive the full 80 per cent. rebate. We sold this tax to voters as an individual charge on a person for the services from which he benefits, and we must honour that all the way through.
Second homes have been mentioned. I am delighted that the Government have given local authorities the flexibility to make a zero standard charge, a half charge, a full charge, a charge of one and a half times or twice the charge. A case similar to that which applies to one of my

constituents has been mentioned. A teacher living away from my constituency and teaching down south pays the community charge there and has been levied twice the charge—£730—up north on a home that she is in for only a few weeks in the year. That makes no sense.
What system should apply if the husband and wife are to be treated separately and have a second home that they perhaps own? Can the woman opt to count one of them as hers, while the husband counts the other as his main home, in which case they would pay a single charge in each home? At it is, they pay two full charges for a main home and two charges—if the local authority chooses to levy the standard charge—for the second home. Under a separate charge system they could immediately have their community charge bill halved. That is open to abuse, but I raise it as a point of principle and I hope that the Government have thought it through.
The Government have said that the rebate system is generous. I admit that an 80 per cent. rebate is more generous than that which my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) might employ. He might have people paying half the charge, the full charge or twice the charge, depending upon their highest rate of income tax. I am delighted that students will get the full 80 per cent. rebate. However, we must consider the low rates of income that enable one to qualify for that rebate. We must change the rules. A single person of 18, 20, 25 or 30 or more may earn perhaps £50 or £60 a week. That is not a high wage in today's economy, even in the north-west. I strongly recommend loosening the rules and regulations. There should be much more of a taper in the system.
The uniform business rate has been mentioned and the north-west will benefit most from that, which I welcome. Many businesses, and especially retailers, are small traders and there are many small country post offices. I have many such businesses in my constituency. They are paying, admittedly after revaluation, five or six times their original bill. The very large do-it-yourself stores such as B and Q pay a charge based on the depth of the store, while the small business or shop has only a small depth of property. District valuers should be asked to be more lenient to small businesses. We should treat the matter on a totally new basis. We could change the community charge, perhaps relating the residential charge to the uniform business rate on mixed premises. We should be able to examine the whole thing and see what is fair and reasonable in today's world.
Some 15 to 20 years ago, when the last revaluation took place, there were no large sheds housing do-it-yourself shops such as B and Q. Such shops give a very good service and excellent value for money, but the present system is to their benefit and to the disadvantage of the small business man who provides a local service in rural areas. I want to encourage such businesses, because without them rural communities will die.
What are we to do about local government finance? I have said that the community charge is fair, but how can we overcome the problem of a family of two adults and two children of, say, 18 or 20 years of age who have to pay four community charges? In the past, their rates bill may have been about £150 and they may now be asked for £1,500. That is not uncommon in my constituency. What can one say to such people? One can do more than tell them to claim the maximum rebate to which they are entitled.
There is much unfairness in the system. Chorley had a Conservative-controlled local authority—it is only a one-seat majority—and it spends exactly in line with the Government's guidelines, and all credit to it for that. However, the Labour-controlled Lancashire county council, which, again, has only a one-seat majority, has massively overspent. Its budget this year is so enormous that rates would have had to increase by 30 per cent. Instead of the standard community charge of £278, the charge in Chorley is £360, and the extra £80 is shown in each community charge form as being the result of the policies of the Labour-controlled Lancashire county council. Unfortunately, electors and voters do not read the forms carefully.
If we are to run United Kingdom Ltd. efficiently in a tight economy and difficult circumstances, we must find better means to control spending. In general, the Government's SSAs are accurate and fair. There are two years before the next general election and the Labour party has said that it will not tinker with the system immediately, so local authorities have three or four years to bring their spending down to a fair level. The SSAs take into account the needs and requirements of the population and its demography. We have had so many different systems that, by now, we should know what the spending levels should be.
We must change the rules and regulations. Rather than cut rate support grant to local authorities, the Government should have cushioned the blow and been generous. That would have ensured that the community charge was accepted as fair and reasonable, and there would have been wider support for it. We should have less tinkering to do now. We need to look carefully at how we change the system. I was interested to hear the genuine misgivings voiced by Labour Members, and Conservative Members share many of them. We want to see changes, and I am sure that the Government will get a strong message next Thursday which will ensure that in the next few years drastic changes will be made in the level of assessments and spending.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The 10-minute limit on speeches has been lifted, but some hon. Members have been here throughout the debate and I hope to call everybody who wishes to speak. Therefore, I appeal for voluntary restraint.

Mr. Peter Hardy: I hope that the hon. Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover) will forgive me if I do not follow his somewhat inconsistent speech. However, I shall follow the points made by the hon. Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), who made historic references. I often think that we should be better off if hon. Members knew more about history. If the Prime Minister had studied English history instead of the constituents of ice-cream, I doubt that this project would ever have got off the ground.
One does not have to go back to the 14th century and what happened to the last poll tax to form the fair judgment that the Conservative party has demonstrated its unfitness to have responsibility for the direction of local

Government. It has been said that this is an historic change in the reform of local government finance. Some of us were Members of Parliament when, through another historic change in local government, a reorganised system was inflicted upon Britain in 1973. That was the most inflationary exercise that Britain had ever experienced. It was clumsy and incompetent, and it caused dramatic heartache to the people in local government, for they had to make that difficult system operate.
Conservative Members with experience in local government know that that is true. Now they are perpetrating a larger, and perhaps more painful and unfair, error. It will lead to an unfair and corrupt system that has been compounded by the decision to poll tax-cap authorities such as that which I represent and others in Yorkshire.
Let me make one thing clear. It has become fashionable for Conservative Members to talk about local government as spendthrift and inefficient. I have said before that, if central Government were as efficient as local government, the country would be a great deal better off after 10 years of this Administration. Look at the Sheffield Forgemasters business with Iraq. We do not know the difference between a gun and a petrol pump. Today's trade figures are twice as bad as the Government and the City were expecting.
After the Government's decision to poll tax-cap, the director of education in Rotherham, Mr. Snowden, sent me a serious letter, and I wrote to the Secretary of State for Education and Science to ask him to take the trouble to read this letter from a splendid educationist, and to respond himself. My secretary has worked for me for 16 or 17 years. She said to me, "You know what will happen." I said, "Tell me." She said, "We will send the letter to the Department and within two or three days I will get a telephone call saying that it has mislaid the letter and could I send a copy of it." I said, "I do not think that that will happen with such a serious letter." She said, "It has happened every time we have sent a letter like that to the Department of Education and Science in the past two years." Sure enough, three days later, we had a telephone call from an official asking for a copy of the letter because the Department had lost it.
I am glad that the Under-Secretary is in the Chamber. On 3 April, the Government announced that they would be capping the poll tax. My council was condemned as inefficient and spendthrift. However, on 10 April, I got a letter from the Under-Secretary paying tribute to my council for its "tremendous effort" in administering the poll tax and in managing to send out the community charge bills. My council is efficient, but it did not know where it was. Three days after the financial year began, the Secretary of State said that it was not efficient and should be punished for being spendthrift, although apparently his colleague did not know that.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment used to run Wandsworth council, which seems to be one of the only two boroughs about which the Government are concerned. The other is Westminster, with which I shall compare Rotherham. Will the Minister comment on some of these figures? I have already set out some of them in a motion, but that motion tells only part of the story because I did not want to occupy too much space.
Rotherham, as the Minister knows because he has been to see it, has enormous problems. It has an above-average number of old people and of children of school age, with all the financial implications that that presents. This year,


its spending will be £821·93 per head. Westminster has fewer old people because many have capitalised on the housing boom and left. It has an enormous income from second homes, to which at least 60 or 70 Members of Parliament contribute. It is a compact area with little of the unemployment and dereliction that we face. It is not supposed to be a big spender, but its average spending is £1,181·54—£259 more than Rotherham.
Let us look at the income. The poll tax in Westminster is £195, its business rate is £292, its education grant, because it is in the metropolis, is £53·32 and it has other income of £11·11 which, together with the standard spending grant of £865·84, makes a total of £1,420·78.
According to the Government, Rotherham is a wicked authority. It has set a poll tax of £334 and there is the business rate of £292. With low rateable values and the destruction of industry over the past decade, it has received the enormously generous grant of £ 18·39. There is other income of £28. The standard spending grant is £188·39. That produces a total of about £861.
Westminster's income is enormously greater than that of Rotherham's, and so is its spending. Westminster's needs are not as great as the areas which my hon. Friend's and I represent and about which we are concerned. The figures to which I have drawn attention show that the spending assessments by the Government were deficient from the start. I can only express astonishment that the Government did not foresee the horrifying consequences. Indeed, they compounded them by the unfairness and corruption of the capping list which the Secretary of State produced.

The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. David Hunt): Perhaps my intervention will provide the hon. Gentleman with an opportunity to recover from his exaggerated statement. As he has acknowledged that the important feature is the standard spending assessment, I invite him to consider the positions of Lambeth and Wandsworth, which he has not included in the figures to which he drew attention. Lambeth receives one third more in grant than Wandsworth, yet there is a great disparity in the community charges that the boroughs have set. Westminster is budgeting to spend 7 per cent. below its standard spending assessment while Rotherham has chosen to budget excessively at 20 per cent. above its SSA.

Mr. Hardy: Rotherham is budgeting for a modest increase in the level of services that it provides to match the increase in the number of children and old people. The growth element, as it was, is only £3 million. It is a far smaller sum than that created by the additional demands made by Government policies.
In reply to a parliamentary question which I tabled, the Under-Secretary of State replied to the effect that Rotherham will be able to obey the capping order without disrupting services. I do not know what preparation was made for that answer. If the capping order is implemented, scarcely any books will be bought by the library. Of course, the Government are not worried about that. Rotherham will have to reduce the quality of school meals. There will be implications for swimming and music facilities for schools, and I am especially concerned about music. There is a fine local tradition that I wish to be maintained but I fear that it will suffer. Facilities such as the Rotherham Valley country park would go if the order were implemented. There would be consequences for street

lighting which could result in road accidents, and perhaps fatalities. I suppose that that would not unduly concern the Government because they cannot find Tories in the areas which my hon. Friends and I represent.
As the Minister knows, the area which I represent has never sought to break the law. Instead, it has sought to conduct itself with civilised balance and to build structures within the community that embrace a cross-section of society. The authority has worked with the chamber of commerce and the voluntary bodies. It has worked efficiently and inexpensively to try to surmount the problems that we face. The Minister knows that that is true. The contemptible feature of the Government's actions is that they have caused anger of a sort that I have not experienced for a long time.
The Government should understand that my constituents believe that the new tax is foul, unfair and incomprehensible. It has compounded their difficulties. How can the Minister and his ministerial colleagues tell the local authority that they can match spending pound for pound or penny for pound to deal with the dereliction and other problems which he has seen? If it were still legal tender under this inflationary Administration, we would not be able to match farthings for pounds. The authority will not be able to find its way out of the problems unless there is a Government who show that they have some sense of history and a commitment to justice. 'That is definitely not demonstrated by the apportionment, of public moneys that is the result of the poll tax.

Mr. Henry Bellingham: I do not share the fears of the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) about education. If he examines any local education authority he will find the extent of the savings that can be made. He will find administrators in ivory towers who should lose their jobs, instead of people at the sharp end losing theirs. Like all Opposition Members who have participated in the debate so far, the hon. Member for Wentworth said nothing about what the Labour party would do if it were in government. That is extraordinary, given that this is a Supply day.
I represent a constituency which has a thriving light industrial base. There are many small manufacturers in the constituency and in the main they have done quite well out of the uniform business rate. I am concerned, however, about small retail businesses, including small village shops and retailers in the high streets of King's Lynn and Hunstanton. When the Government decided to embark upon the UBR and set rental values in April 1988, the economy was booming. At that stage, rental values were perhaps at their peak. Retail businesses were doing extremely well.
We all know that the margins of village shops are extremely tight. Those who run them struggle to provide a service to village communities, which are sometimes remote. They are often part of the key fabric of a rural infrastructure. Even in 1988, many village shopkeepers were struggling. In the present economic climate, which is very different from that of 1988, they are finding life extremely difficult. My hon. Friend the Minister is well aware of my view that the Government must reconsider the transitional scheme for small businesses.
The Government must also seriously consider a problem that was put to me only last weekend by one of


my constituents. He told me that he is a baker and one of my supporters. He lives above his business with two sons, who both work in the bakery. The four members of the family are paying poll tax. I told him that his previous business rate contained an element of domestic rating. I invite my hon. Friend the Minister to try to explain that to someone who is running a small village business with tight margins. If my hon. Friend said that anyone running a village shop, a pub or a bakery and living next to it or above it would be liable for only one community charge, that would make a considerable difference. I do not think that it would cost much, but it would be recognised as a major concession and a significant move forward.
My hon. Friend will probably tell me that those who run the businesses to which I have referred can make use of the transitional arrangement. I accept that, but he must face the fact that there is real concern among village shopkeepers. There is genuine concern that extends beyond shopkeepers to include many other constituents, who see village shops as a key part of the fabric of rural communities. I urge my hon. Friend carefully to consider these matters.
I have always accepted the principle behind the community charge. I was heartened by recent opinion polls that showed that about 70 per cent. of the public accepted that everyone should contribute to the provision of local authority services. The results of a poll that are reported in the Evening Standard—I see that my hon. Friend the Minister has a copy of the report—are similar. Accountability in local government is needed greatly. I believe that the local elections next week will not show anything like the scale of devastation that Opposition Members are willing upon us. Instead, the results will show that many electors took a sensible choice. They know well that, if they elect a Tory-controlled council, they will pay a lower poll tax. That message is getting across.
As I have said, I have always accepted the principle behind the community charge. At the same time, I have accepted that there are problems. We have a good idea, but its implementation has gone badly wrong. The other day, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that, if implementation of the community charge was a dog's dinner, a rates revaluation would have been a rottweiler's dinner. I rather like rottweilers. I think that the implementation of the community charge is worse than a rottweiler's dinner; it is a feast for a large number of rottweilers. Many things have gone badly wrong. We underestimated the extent to which local authorities would seize this window of opportunity to put up their expenditure. That has resulted in higher community charge figures.
The 1981 Green Paper "Alternatives to Domestic Rates" stated:
The Government believes that a flat-rate annual capitation charge
of the order of £240
would almost certainly not be a practical proposition. If a poll tax were used to supplement another tax, however, the tax rate would obviously be lower, and it is in this way that a poll tax is most likely, in practice, to be able to contribute to a system of local revenues.
If the 1981 figure of £240 were inflation-uprated, it would be about £350—roughly in line with the average poll tax—yet in 1981 the Government said that that sort of level would not be a practical proposition.
The Government must find a way to bring down poll tax levels. The problem is how to do that without throwing money at local authorities and without that money going down the drain and being spent on pet schemes and projects. One of the tragedies of this whole exercise is that, over the past 10 years, the Government have gone a long way towards containing and controlling central Government expenditure on local government—indeed, they have been quite successful in containing public expenditure generally—yet at one fell swoop a great deal of money is going out of the window.
The Government must carefully consider taking a function away from local government. That could be teachers' pay, the police service or the fire service. They must then find a way to contain that and to ensure that the savings are dedicated to the community charge payer. They must also reconsider the rebate system. Like my hon. Friends, I have been confronted by constituents saying, "We have moved to a system of individual assessment for income tax. We thought that the community charge was a personal charge," or, "I am a mother at home looking after the children, yet I am expected to pay the full community charge."
The Government must consider a system of individual, separate assessment. I know that the Minister will say that a millionaire's wife could then claim a rebate, but I do not think that there are many people in that category. However, there are many thousands of people who would benefit from individual, separate assessment. It would then be a genuine personal charge and they could apply for a rebate in their own right.
I do not know what that would cost. Perhaps my hon. Friend could give an approximate figure. I do not have any idea about the probable uptake. However, it would be one way to make the community charge much fairer.

Mr. David Hunt: It is difficult to cost a proposal without more detail. Does not my hon. Friend think that it would be wrong, under such a system, to favour the non-working wife or husband of a spouse earning £30,000, £40,000 or £50,000 a year, while penalising the working wife or husband of a working spouse, both of whom were earning £8,000 a year? Such a couple would have to pay a double community charge, yet the non-working spouse and his or her partner, who had a considerable income, would pay only one charge.

Mr. Bellingham: I accept that, but my hon. Friend must remember that there is now a system of individual tax assessment. The community charge is going in the opposite direction. I accept my hon. Friend's example, but there are many people on the borderline who do not qualify for rebates, such as pensioners, pensioner couples and mothers who have decided to stay at home to look after their children. There is always a trailer in these matters and we are looking for ways to take the sting out of a system that is perceived to be unfair—

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Bellingham: I am sorry, but I must press on.

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Why does my hon. Friend say that to everybody?

Mr. Bellingham: I am sure that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity to make her points.
Although I was pleased by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor's announcement in the Budget, I find the formula being used quite extraordinary. The first £3,000 of savings are completely ignored, while every £2·50 over £3,000 is deemed to produce £1 of notional or tariff income. That represents a marginal interest of almost 21 per cent. That is the deemed interest that people with savings of between £3,000 and £16,000 are supposed to be receiving. That is ludicrous. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to recognise the importance of that point.
I also ask my hon. Friend to listen to the criticisms from constituents who previously were obtaining rates rebates because they were disabled or suffering from some incurable disease. For some reason, they are not receiving poll tax rebates. I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise the anomalies. He has shown that he is prepared to be reasonably open minded. He has already reconsidered the status of caravan sites. I urge him also to consider the case of disabled people who feel badly let down.
The Government must deal with the perception of inherent unfairness in the new system. Some may refer to the soft underbelly of the British people, but there is also a hard underbelly. That is characterised by a sense of fairness. I have not yet met a single top rate taxpayer who is anything but ashamed of the savings that he is making. I have not yet met a single top rate taxpayer who would object to paying more. The mood in the country has changed dramatically, and the Government must urgently and enterprisingly consider not scrapping the system, because it can work, but imposing a premium on those paying the top rate of tax. Perhaps they could pay 75 per cent. more, or even double. That would meet the argument that the Government have introduced an inherently unfair system. I am sure that every top rate taxpayer would accept my proposal and I urge my hon. Friend to find ways to implement it.
This is an Opposition Supply day, yet the Shadow Secretary of State gave a fairly abysmal performance. The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) did not give the House any idea about Labour's policies. That is extraordinary. It is also extraordinary that, on an Opposition Supply day—Labour's big day on the poll tax—the Opposition Benches have been marked by their emptiness. Many Conservative Members are uneasy about the community charge and they might have been tempted either to vote with the Opposition or to abstain. However, if the hon. Member for Dagenham had hoped to win us over, I have to tell him quite frankly that he went about it the wrong way. He said nothing remotely positive.
My hon. Friend the Minister has shown that he is prepared to listen. I am, of course, aware that he is moving on to new pastures. The Government, in the very phrasing of their amendment, have shown that they are willing to listen to constructive suggestions. Many Conservative Members have put forward serious and constructive suggestions. I urge my hon. Friend to show more urgency than he has previously and to consider those suggestions. Above all, I urge him to implement our proposals not in a year's time, but in the near future. We will then have a system of which we can be proud and one that will help our party and, above all, will lead to better local government

Mr. Allen McKay: I shall begin my speech by being very constructive and giving the Minister some advice: forget the poll tax. My advice is as pure and as simple as that. I hope that the reports of our debate will be read widely outside the House. I hope that people will also read the reports of the Second Reading and Committee stages of the Act, especially the speeches made by Conservative Members.
Conservative Members waved their papers and said that the poll tax was the flagship of their party and the alternative to the hated rates system. Surprisingly. the one thing that the poll tax has done is make the public appreciate how well the old system worked, even though it did contain anomalies.
Also remarkable is the number of Conservative Members who say that the poll tax is fair but go on to describe all the ways in which it is unfair. We heard repeated today all the arguments that the Opposition made in Committee. The very points made by Conservative Members were contained in Opposition amendments that Tory Members rejected. Two years ago, we told the Government, "We accept that the rate system is unfair sometimes and that it contains anomalies, but before you introduce poll tax let us sit down together on an all-party basis and find another alternative." That offer was also rejected, and the Government have poll tax around their necks as a consequence.
Last week I had the good fortune to visit Her Majesty's forces in the Falklands, and saw there a vehicle with a notice on it reading "No poll tax."

Mr. David Hunt: Like the hon. Gentleman, I have flown thousands of miles to attend this debate. The hon. Gentleman has made clear his views on the community charge, but will he say what he considers to be his party's alternative? The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) proposed a floor tax. What alternatives does the hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) think that his party offers?

Mr. McKay: I shall give a personal view and a party view—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] Conservative Members will not enjoy my party's view either. Local government organisation and expenditure is in a bigger mess now than ever before, and Labour must carefully examine the possible alternatives to poll tax. We must cost them and consider the correct machinery. However, I assure the Minister that our system will be based on a person's ability to pay. It will be fair, equitable, and accountable—and it will blow the Government's poll tax to pieces.
As to accountability, my son is in the Navy, his home is in Gosport, his ship is based at Rosyth, and at present he is at sea. Where does he pay his poll tax, and how will he be accountable? What services will be provided for the poll tax that he pays? He certainly will not receive any services at sea, or at Rosyth, and he is away from Gosport for three years, apart from occasional visits.
As to financial accountability, my local authority is accountable to the people who vote in its members, one third of whom are elected every year. Each and every year that authority is accountable. It holds public meetings on its programe and its costs, which the meetings can either accept or reject. If the authority makes mistakes during the course of the year, the electorate will show their displeasure at the ballot box. It is significant that my local


authority has been Labour-controlled for 50 years. It has 60 Labour councillors, one Liberal and two Conservatives. If the council has not been providing the right services, or if they become too costly, how is it that Labour has remained in control for the past 50 years?

Mr. Janman: How many people vote at the elections?

Mr. McKay: The poll is usually between 40 per cent. and 60 per cent., which is a very high vote.
My constituency is unique in all kinds of ways, and I really love it. It is varied from area to area. Parts of it are industrial—or they were, before 10 collieries closed. Another part of it is very rural. The problems occur in the low-value, built-up area. The larger houses are in the rural area, where the best properties are to be found. If one takes the example of the refuse service, it is far easier to make collections in the low-value built-up area than in the high-value rural area, where there are houses with drives and long paths.
An investigation of the use made of local facilities shows that the library serving the Penistone area is patronised more than the one in the built-up area. Also, I am now receiving letters about the deteriorating roads in my constituency. The worst affected are those in the rural areas, which suffer from the extremes of climate. The poll tax throws all such different considerations out of the window.
The area has a male unemployment rate of 18·6 per cent., and it is rising. Female unemployment is 5 per cent., and it is also rising. The difference is accounted for by a geographical quirk and the loss of industries such as coal, steel and engineering, whereas there has never been a great deal of work available for females. The local authority has taken upon itself to improve the situation by increasing educational attainment, which, sadly, is currently one of the lowest in Britain due to historical factors relating to a huge area that was formerly heavily dependent on industry. I have no grumbles about that. I enjoy where I live. I enjoy living among the people there and going for a drink with them. I also listen to their views and to their grumbles, and it is clear that the poll tax is the most hated of all the Government's measures.
Conservative Members have talked about refining the poll tax, but every time that it has been refined it has cost local authorities more money. The computer system that it was necessary for my local authority to install to collect poll tax cost £3·5 million more than that needed to collect the rates.

Mr. Janman: If the cost of changing from the old system to poll tax is a reason for objecting to it, given the hon. Gentleman's comments that a future Labour Government will change the system again, he highlights a major practical argument against so doing.

Mr. McKay: The answer is an overall rating and tax system. I entirely agree with the remarks about tax made by the hon. Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham).
Grants to local government over the past nine years have fallen from 74 per cent. to 34 per cent. Poll tax is high in our areas because of a history of a lack of grants, lower

rateable values, and the absence of any compassion or care. I agree with Conservative Members that the old system had faults but poll tax will not do away with them.
I wish that I had more time because a lot remains to be said about the issue.
Hon. Members have asked why a married couple should pay two taxes. Time and again people have asked me why they have received a poll tax notification form with their husband's income on it. We must ask ourselves who pays if 50 per cent. of that income is taken away. Is it the husband, who then has to pay twice as much, or is it central Government?
Every time we tinker with the poll tax to try to refine it, it costs someone something. However, it does not cost the Government anything. They make sure of that, but the fault lies with them; the costs stem from them.
I agree with a certain lady, for whom I have a great deal of respect, who said that, if the Government had been a charity, they would have considered the poll tax and thrown it away, because they do not mind saving face. But the Government do mind saving face; and if they spoke the truth honestly and considered the anomalies they would forget the tax.
Let us all sit down together to devise a proper system to finance local government not only for next year or the year after but for decades to come, irrespective of what political party is in government.

Mr. Gwilym Jones: The hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) said earlier that she did not intend to pay the community charge. I was appalled when she said that apparently there are bishops and other Church leaders who support her in that non-payment. We are not far past Easter, and I seem to remember that in the Bible Jesus advocated a lawful approach to the payment of tax. I do not recall that Jesus advocated a greedy approach to the law, or said that one should obey the laws that one likes and flout laws that one does not like. When Church leaders are so out of touch with biblical principle, is it any wonder that churches are empty?
I wish to draw attention to the community charge in Wales and how it affects my constituents. I have a strong complaint against my own Front Bench, because the list of councils to be capped, which was announced on 3 April, did not include any councils in Wales. I know that that is not the fault of the Secretary of State for the Environment, because it is the responsibility of the departing Secretary of State for Wales.
In Wales, total spending by all county and district councils will increase by £223 million this financial year—a 12 per cent. increase. That burden will fall disproportionately on my constituents. Cardiff council wants an increase of £10·2 million and South Glamorgan an increase of £26 million, which is more than £36 million out of the total for Wales of £223 million.
The increase is not widely spread, because South Glamorgan comprises only five constituencies and Cardiff, with an increase of some £10 million, represents approximately three and a half constituencies. In other words, my 54,000 constituents in Cardiff, North will have to bear an impost of an extra £8 million, and that is merely the extra this year.
On 3 April, the same day that the Secretary of State made his announcement about English councils, my right


hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, in a written answer, responded to my question about capping Welsh local councils. He said that he had similar powers to the Secretary of State for the Environment and that he had determined the principles upon which local councils in Wales would be capped. He had determined that no councils in Wales should be capped.
If the same formula was applied to Wales as to English local councils, that decision was wrong. In Wales, the figures for the community charge are slightly lower, I am glad to say. The charge is only meant to raise some 15 per cent. of the total of local council spending. It was laid down that the increase over standing spending assessment for English councils should be at least 12·5 per cent., an increase of £75 per adult, and capping would have to result in a reduction of at least £26 per adult. In Cardiff we satisfy at least two of the three tests.
I have it on the good authority of my colleague Councillor Martin Davies—the shadow chairman on the South Glamorgan council finance committee—that each council could easily have been capped by £50 per adult without affecting the essential services that either South Glamorgan or Cardiff council provide. Therefore, we satisfy the test of a reduction of at least £26. We also satisfy the 12·5 per cent. test. When calculated in total, the community charge for the two councils exceeds the standard spending assessment by 60 per cent. That is the size of the imposition upon my constituents.
As the figures are lower in Wales than in England, we do not satisfy the requirement where the increase has been more than £75 per adult, because the charges—some of my English colleagues may think that we are in a preferential situation—are £175 for the county council and £78 for the city council making a total of £253.
It is ironic that the neighbouring district council is the Vale of Glamorgan, which is Conservative-controlled, and which provides almost the same services as Cardiff. Whereas Cardiff is charging £78, the Vale of Glamorgan which is a smaller council and a more rural area is charging only £24. The Vale of Glamorgan has a Labour Member of Parliament, and he has directed attention to his council, saying that it is spending significantly in excess of the standard spending assessment. I know that many of my constituents would cheerfully swap their charge for the charge being levied there.
Many of us in Cardiff, North feel let down. It is significant that there is to be a change of Secretary of State for Wales. I know of and appreciate the courage of many Conservative councillors on both councils in Cardiff who did not want capping. They preferred to go into the next election in May next year better armed. However, I regret that the Secretary of State for Wales did not give that relief to my constituents and that we do not have capping.
I am well aware that the incoming Secretary of State for Wales is sitting on the Front Bench. I am glad to take the opportunity to mention an important Welsh matter when he is to reply to the debate. Perhaps this is the first reference to his new office. He may think that this is not the most appropriate occasion to refer in detail to what I have said about Cardiff, but I know that he is taking full notice.
I realise that it is now too late for Cardiff and South Glamorgan councils to be capped. Instead I look forward to the introduction of accountability. People in Cardiff are now much more interested and better equipped to see how our money is spent. I fear that the money will not be spent in the Conservative constituencies of South Glamorgan. In

the two constituencies in the north of Cardiff there are but two leisure centres, and our roads are the last to be maintained—

Mr. Alun Michael: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Jones: No, I do not think that I should give way because the hon. Gentleman has not had the courtesy to attend any part of the debate before and I know that many of my colleagues have sat here all day. In the interests of brevity I shall not give way.
When spending decisions are being made by the left-wing controlled councils of Cardiff and South Glamorgan, there is a political dimension and they discriminate against Conservative areas. Some of our schools are in the poorest state. For example, Llanishen high school is in such a bad state that even the local Labour party acknowledges the state for neglect that the Labour-controlled county council has reduced it to.
Of course, two of our wards last year made the mistake of electing Labour councillors, including the ward of Llanishen. That is a self-defeating, futile objective. It confirms, if confirmation were necessary, that the Labour group can continue to discriminate against Conservative areas, such as Llanishen high school. As long as there are Labour councillors, there will be no effective complaint.
Local management of schools might provide relief, but capital spending and major repairs would still be the responsibility of the Labour-controlled county council. For the benefit of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), who was not here earlier, the county council will be spending £234 million, an increase of £28 million, but how much has it found to rectify its neglect of schools? It has found £1·6 million.
The catchment areas of our schools are also being manipulated. Political manipulation of the education policy in South Glamorgan means that I sympathise with the proposal that education spending should be taken away from county councils. I do not support it in principle, but the experience of my constituents tempts me to adopt it. Accountability will come into play. Two local community councils in south Wales are already coming under the most intense scrutiny.
Last week, a packed meeting voted that one of the community councils should be disbanded because of the excessive community charge. That was not in my constituency, or in a Conservative-controlled area; that was in Vaynor, which is in the Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney constituency, the safest Labour seat in the country. Electors are now deploying the accountability weapon to try to bring their community councillors to heel. Roll on next year and the Cardiff council elections. I predict that the skids are under the left. It cannot fool all the people all the time. Accountability will bring the left to heel.
Several of my hon. Friends have already referred to the standard community charge. Constituents are going to see their Members of Parliament and telling them that they have two homes, not because they want a second home but because they have moved jobs and cannot sell their former home. One of my constituents was advised at the city hall in Cardiff, I hope facetiously, that he should separate from his wife—that he should live in one of the homes while his wife lived in the other—as the only way of avoiding the


standard community charge. If people cannot sell when they move jobs, or if they inherit a house and cannot sell it, they may face hardship.
The second home will not be liable to the standard community charge for only three months. I hope that the Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office will look again at that problem. It is unsatisfactory to leave this merely to the discretion of local councils. Already we regret the fact that local councils have not exercised discretion over setting the level of the standard community charge. I should like the exemption period to be extended from three months to at least 12 months, or even for as long as it takes if people can show that they are genuinely trying to sell the second house. They ought not to have to bear the cost of the second standard community charge when the house is clearly not their second home. I hope that there will soon be action to resolve that problem.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: If I express the same sentiments more gently and more softly than my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), I hope that Ministers will listen to a Scot.
In his absence, about which I do not complain, I wish to make one remark to the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold). He said that Labour Members of Parliament are enjoying this. In truth, the discomfiture of political opponents can be delicious, but this matter goes far beyond the cheap discomfiting of political opponents. For a reasonably assiduous constituency Member of Parliament trying to do his job, like me, the poll tax in the second year of its operation is misery. I am not trying to have anyone on; there would be no point in doing so. However, it gets worse, not better. Any Conservative Member of Parliament, or anybody else, who thinks that these are teething troubles and that the problem will go away is mistaken. There is a geological flaw in such an argument: property is static but people are mobile. As long as people are mobile, the problem will continue.
I have been privileged to be a Member of Parliament for 28 years. My constituency surgeries now are the most embarrassing, fraught and difficult that I have ever experienced, by any exponential factor. I see that some Conservative Members are nodding; I think that they have some idea of the taste of things to come.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) referred to the anger that has been injected into the debate. I have three questions. The first concerns a reference to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). Despite all the criticism that has been levelled at him, my hon. Friend has been intellectually rigid and has worked hard to obtain some solution. In the deepest sense, my hon. Friend is a very honest man. He has been struggling to find some an answer to the problem.
As for the question of a property tax, I make no bones about the fact that I should be in favour of returning to something similar to the rates. In the early 1980s, there was panic in Scotland about something that was not fully understood. Scottish rating is not the subject of the debate. However, wrong lessons were learnt as the result of an outcry by a comparatively small section of the community.
My first question is this: what are the English doing? Are they looking at the Scottish experience? If I were an incoming Minister, I would spend a week in Scotland and look at what is happening there. It has been put about by Conservative Members of Parliament who are friends of mine that they were told, "We do not know very much about Scotland, old chap. English Ministers do not have very much to do with Scotland." That is an extremely unwise attitude. The experience of the poll tax in its second year of operation is wholly different.
I ask my second question not in banter but in seriousness: what are Ministers going to do to protect the officials who have to handle the poll tax? My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) referred to the fact that benefit claims have been stopped in social security offices. In my region, Lothian, it is a matter of public record that courses in self-defence are now offered to social security staff, poll tax staff and local government staff. I have tabled a question as to what form of karate, tae kwan do or judo will be offered. In one sense, that is ribaldry, but when serious authorities are offering courses in self-defence, what on earth is Britain coming to?
The figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Hillhead are accurate. In Strathclyde, 400,000 people are behind with their payments. That represents 23 per cent., or £101 million. Comparatively few people are refusing to pay as a political protest. They are mostly people who genuinely cannot pay.
That brings me to my third question, which involves sanctions. What do Ministers propose should be done, because in year two the system is that much more advanced? It is not just a question of putting letters through letter boxes but of having to deal with people who have not paid. Are there to be sanctions against 400,000 people and, if so, what sanctions will they be? For heaven's sake, we are not talking about prison, are we?

Mr. Hardy: Yes.

Mr. Dalyell: If we are, what else? My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth has returned to the Chamber. I referred to his comment about anger. That is what we are facing.
I promised not to speak for long, so I leave it at those questions: the Scottish experience and what is being done about it, what is being offered to staff in the way of protection and, finally, the sanctions that will be applied when it comes to the crunch, because for us in Scotland it has come to the crunch.

9 pm

Mr. Douglas French: A number of right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken this evening have blamed high spending by local authorities as one of the chief causes of difficulties with the community charge. I would not depart from that practice in referring to Gloucestershire. If the same amount of money as has been collected in community charge this year were collected under the rating system, the rate increase this year would amount to no less than 55 per cent. or an average rates bill of £664. But that is not the respect in which I wish to blame the local authorities this evening. They stand charged with a much more serious offence which has not been covered to a great extent in tonight's debate.
I wish to focus most of my remarks on the operation of the standard community charge and pick up some of the


points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones). The standard community charge has been characterised by a failure on the part of local authorities to exercise appropriately the powers that they have been given to set different multipliers for different classes of property and personal circumstances.
I am bound to say that the standard charge is something of a misnomer. It is inaptly named because the community charge system is essentially based on a personal charge. In common parlance, people would regard the personal charge as standard or basic, so the use of the word standard to imply something other than what the majority of people pay is a mistake. It would be better to call it special, adjusted or exceptional to show that it is not what the average person pays. It is often but not always double what the average person pays. The average person who comes into the category of having to pay a standard charge that has been set at double rate—it is often but not always double what the average person pays—in the overwhelming majority of cases is paying a triple rate because he is also paying his original personal charge.
The main failure on the part of the local authorities in relation to the standard charge seems to be in distinguishing between its application in relation to second homes and second properties. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North made the point that second homes that are furnished and lived in for half the week or the year are deliberately retained as an additional place to live represent a category of dwelling that is completely different from a second property that a person is endeavouring to sell, but because of the difficult market is unable to do so.
When I listened to my hon. Friends the Members for Chorley (Mr. Dover) and for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) I began to wonder whether they had paid sufficient attention to the scope given to local authorities to recognise the difference in circumstances between those who have second homes and those who have second properties. I refer them to a written answer in Hansard on 21 March, column 658, which was given in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Couchman) by my hon. Friend the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities. He set out in great detail the scope that is available for local authorities to recognise individual circumstances when they set the standard community charge. The important factor is that much of the bad publicity about the community charge, and much of the condemnation of it as a system, have arisen because people have picked out one or two highly emotional examples which have often related to what has been a manifestly unfair imposition of the standard community charge, normally in its double format.
Let me cite a couple of examples from close to my constituency. Miss Jean Godbold of Hucclecote lodge lives in the Gloucestershire, West constituency, but she was the talk of virtually everyone in Gloucester. She had been living in the upstairs part of her property. Owing to failing eyesight and health, she moved into the lower part of her property, and the upper part was made into a self-contained unit. She immediately received a bill for her personal community charge for the lower part of the property—correctly—and one for standard community charge for the upper part of the property. The standard community charge was levied at the double rate.
Tewkesbury council—her local council—said that that was unfair in theory and in practice. However, it did not

acknowledge that, had the local authority got its act in order at the correct time—before 1 April—the problem could have been avoided. It could have created a class that made the multiplier zero-rated, and then Miss Godbold would not have been obliged to pay a double rate. The local authority then decided to blame the Government on the wrong grounds, and sought retrospective discretion to put right its mistake. [Interruption.] I appreciate that Labour Members do not wish to hear such examples, but I would like to give another.
Mr. and Mrs. K. Smith now reside at Woodend Cam, in the Stroud constituency, but one of them came from my constituency. They were a widow and a widower who decided to get married. They had two houses, but then they married and consolidated into one, and received a bill for the double community charge in respect of the house that they had left. The headline in the local Gloucester paper said:
Triple poll tax a disgrace".
However, as far as I am aware, neither the press nor any of the radio stations mentioned that that problem could have been avoided if the class had been changed before 1 April, and an extension been made to what is clearly set out as class C.
Class C refers to properties that are unoccupied or unfurnished. They are allowed a zero multiplier for three months, but, provided that the local authority has created the class in advance, it has the discretion to extend the period for longer. That is especially important in the present housing market conditions. The failure to set the appropriate classes at the right time has caused more trouble, inconvenience and hardship, and has given the community charge a worse name, than almost anything else.
Three months' grace is nowhere near sufficient in the present housing conditions. Realistically priced houses are taking not three months to sell, but over a year. The people who happen to live or have properties in areas where local authorities have not taken the action when they should have are being unduly penalised as a result of a deficiency on the part of the authorities, which are seeking to blame the Government. The local authority could have extended those three months to 12 months or two years if it had thought about it at the right time and had applied it to all classes of such property in its area.
Some local authorities are using a discretion whereby they defer collection of the charge for properties that Call in that category until they have been sold. I do not know whether this is permissible under the rules—that is a matter for them and their auditors—but it makes it fairer and easier on the vendor's cash flow. However, that would not be necessary if local authorities had acted at the correct time.
I have mentioned how local authorities have not exercised the powers that they should have, but there are many examples of them exercising their powers on the basis of a misunderstanding. I am referring to those examples, plenty of which have appeared in the press, of couples who propose to get married and are living at their respective parents' homes. They buy a property to do it up with the prospect of moving into it later, but in the meantime they receive a personal community charge bill at both homes and a standard community charge bill for the house into which they propose to move, which more often than not is levied at the double rate.
Class A of the description of classes clearly refers to property requiring structural work to make it habitable. Such property is zero rated for standard community charge purposes for six months after the work is completed. If local authorities took the trouble to look at that, they would realise that there is no need for people to be caused the anguish of being sent an erroneously calculated standard community charge bill.
Similar provisions apply to property that has been inherited. There have been much publicised cases of the community charge bill arriving within days of the death of the owner of the property and being picked up by their next of kin. Several local authorities have clearly ignored the perfectly clearly set out example of class E, which provides for zero rating of standard community charge for three months after probate has been granted.
All those examples are different from second homes being occupied not as the sole or main residence but because for one reason or another someone needs or wants a second home. It may be argued that the validity of applying a double community charge is doubtful because such a second home does not require further expenditure on the roads that lead to it, that the risk of calling fire engines is no greater and that its demands on the education service are much the same as a main residence. None the less, one could sustain the argument that in parts of the country a double community charge is desirable to discourage people from having a second property. If the argument is made out that a double charge is valid in those circumstances, it follows that the argument is not made out in respect of second properties which are not occupied or wanted as second homes.

Mr. Rooker: The hon. Gentleman said that he would talk about the second home tax, but he has considered its effect outside his constituency. Should hon. Members assume, therefore, that in Gloucester everyone who is running a business is happy about the uniform business rate and that all the poll tax payers are happy with the poll tax?

Mr. French: That was an extraordinary intervention. I am talking about the standard community charge. The views of many people in Gloucester were greatly influenced by the much publicised examples that I have given. That is why I emphasise them now. It is high time that more people realised that often this is the fault not of the Government but of the local authority.
On a different point, quite serious newspapers, such as The Times, The Sunday Timesand the Financial Times—rom which I recall specific examples—have argued that somehow Members of Parliament can choose the property where they would pay the personal community charge and the property on which they would pay the standard charge. Although this news was much publicised, Members know that that is wrong and that the decision rests with the community charge registration officer. It is important to place it on record that many people have misinterpreted the position.
Mention has been made several times of mixed hereditaments where the standard community charge can apply. A flat above a shop may have been used for many years, not for residential purposes but to provide storage space for the shop. Nevertheless, it is categorised as

residential property. It is therefore possible for the uniform business rate to be applied to the shop premises but for the flat above to attract a standard community charge. Such places could be covered if local authorities were to create a class order at the right time.
The Government may not have as much information as they should about the standard community charge. They do not appear properly to have registered the list of multipliers and classes that have been decided at local level. My questions to elicit that information have revealed that it has not been properly collected. On 4 April, I was disappointed to receive the following answer from the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment—my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Chope)—
I have not yet gathered the information requested except on an informal basis from a few authorities on a basis which did not imply that it would be published."—[Official Report, 4 April 1990; Vol. 170, c. 665.]
I was pleased to learn subsequently that local authorities are now required to make a return by the end of May which will set out the multipliers and classes.
I hope that when those returns come in my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will, if necessary, exercise his powers. It may be possible to have a resolution applying from 1 April that would override the powers of local authorities that had failed to exercise the discretion that they were given. That would be desirable, especially for properties for sale. A local authority could establish a class providing zero rating for 12 months. If that is not done, an undertaking must be obtained from the local authority that it will get its act in order in time for next year. Unless such an undertaking is forthcoming, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State should exercise his powers to ensure that these much-publicised anomalies are not repeated.

Mr. David Blunkett: On what might be the last occasion on which the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities takes part in a major debate on the poll tax in respect of the whole of England and Wales, I begin by saying that it has been a mixed blessing to have him as my opposite number. It has been a blessing because he has been an acceptable Minister of State in the dealings that I have had with him. I pay tribute to the fact that he has been helpful in several ways behind the scenes. It has been a mixed blessing because he has inherited from his predecessors a poisoned chalice, and no mirrors and no clever make-up could hide the truth. I regret that he has had the job, because he will carry it with him for a long time to come. I hope that he will protect Wales slightly better than England and Scotland have been protected.
Earlier, during the speech of the Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Sillars) gave some figures about the position in Scotland vis-a-vis the rating system and the proposition that he described as the roof tax. He seemed to have transposed the figures he gave, so that they made no sense whatever. They were not a true reflection of the press conference of the shadow Secretary of State for Scotland.
Tonight we indict the Government for incompetence, indifference and ideological dogmatism because that is what the poll tax embodies. There have been 15 years of struggle to reach where we are now in April 1990. It is 15 years since the Prime Minister made the promise, and subsequently made Ministers hold to it, that the poll tax


would be imposed on the British people. In those 15 years, and in the past five years that it has taken effectively to implement the tax, no signals have been heeded, words of caution have been ignored and those who have spoken out and given warnings about the impact of the poll tax have been ridiculed.
If one reads the press reports of three or four years ago, when the Local Government Finance Bill was in Committee, one sees not only that the Government were indifferent and determined to push through their dogmatism but that they were incompetent. They failed to understand the basics of local government finance. During the past 10 years, they have struggled with it almost as if they were walking through a minefield.
I give the warning—the Opposition must heed it, too—that those who believe that there are simple solutions to local government finance and the problems of independent funding of local government finance and pluralistic democracy are kidding themselves. There are no simple, easy solutions or glib answers to pull off shelves. If we all remember that, the Opposition, including myself and my hon. Friends on the Front Bench, will not make the same mistakes as the Government have made.
That is why we welcome the criticisms launched against us. We are listening, hearing and taking them into account. I welcome every occasion on which Ministers have a go at the alternative that the Labour party is allegedly dreaming up. Each time they give us something new to think about, I say to them, "Please keep doing it." It is extremely helpful and it will stop us walking into the type of errors that the Government have walked into. First, they set up Scotland as a guinea pig for the experiment and walked away from the laboratory, forgetting to examine and monitor what had taken place. If they had examined the results, they might have learned more quickly what would hit England and Wales and the changes made in England and Wales that were not made in Scotland would not be uppermost in the minds of Scottish Members.
Some Conservative Scottish Members claim the heritage of the poll tax and say that they were responsible for dreaming it up.

Mr. Gould: Not many these days.

Mr. Blunkett: As my hon. Friend says, there are not many of them these days—only the zealots. Even those who are members of the Adam Smith Institute now denounce it as having nothing to do with Adam Smith.
In those early days, we were to have no rebates or exemptions, but a simple—that is how it was described—flat-rate tax. Of course, we had to have rebates to protect the worst off, and it was necessary to have exemptions, although many of them did not come until after the Scottish people had had the poll tax inflicted on them.
We were to have the phasing-in process, whereby some authorities were to have rates and tax together. The Government decided that that was too much of a mixed blessing and abandoned the scheme, just as they abandoned many of the other ideas that originated in the think tank of right-wing philosophy.

Mr. Alex Salmond: I am sympathetic to the hon. Gentleman's point about the Government using Scotland as a guinea pig for the poll tax. That is undoubtedly correct, but have not his own Front Benchers fallen into exactly the same trap by

proposing a tax on capital values, a roof tax for Scotland, which the Leader of the Opposition is on record as saying carries little enthusiasm south of the border?

Mr. Blunkett: I understood that the Scottish National party was in favour of an independent Scotland, where decisions were taken by and for Scots people, not imposed from Westminster, Walworth road or Conservative central office. We believe that the Scots should find their own solution to local government finance and structure. That seems to be a perfectly reasonable principle of devolution. If the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond) does not believe that, will he wait until we come with a solution and plead with us to impose the English and Welsh solution on Scotland? He knows that he does not believe that, and that he was attempting to make a cheap point.

Mr. Bill Walker: I am another Scot who makes no apology for the fact that I believe that this unitary Parliament should decide for the whole of the United Kingdom. Will the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) explain why the Labour party, which apparently also supports that, is, in his own words, putting forward proposals that are different for Scotland and is therefore making Scotland the guinea pig?

Mr. Blunkett: We do so because we accept that Scotland is different. If the Scottish people believe that there is a solution for them that is appropriate to their economy, social make-up and culture, we should be happy to grant that diversity within our United Kingdom. We believe strongly in that.

Mr. Favell: In the unlikely event of the Labour party becoming the Government, as the Scots are to decide for themselves local government expenditure in Scotland, will Scottish Members of Parliament be prevented from voting on local government expenditure in this country?

Mr. Blunkett: The simple answer is no. I promise the hon. Gentleman one thing: following his earlier speech, he will not have the pleasure of joining us in the Lobby when we decide this matter. He made his position unequivocally clear; he believes in the poll tax and has not been convinced that it is bad by what has happened, or is happening, to people. He is going to smash his head into the nearest brick wall on every occasion that he can manage to do so, and I wish him well.
Originally, the Government were not going to introduce safety nets and transitional arrangements, but they were dreamt up when equalisation, in terms of trying to balance out the different resource base of parts of our country, was abolished. When it was discovered that there would be enormous anomalies and a tide-over period was needed, the safety net was invented. Originally, local authorities across the country were going to have to balance each other out, just as they are with the national business rate. After the first year, the Government decided that they would step in.
I have a warning for Conservative Members. Safety nets have been a big enough nightmare in terms of those contributing and benefiting. We all know that because we see the anomalies where sound Conservative councils in the south-east and good, radical, progessive, left-wing authorities such as Islington in London all contribute to the Conservatives' sordid and shabby attempt to hang on to Wandsworth next Thursday.
As a resident of Wandsworth who will be paying the Wandsworth poll tax, I think that it is an insult to the intelligence of Wandsworth residents and voters to suggest that hard-hit inner London boroughs such as Islington and Brent should be expected to contribute £116 per head in order to gerrymander the poll tax in Wandsworth, which is what it comes down to.
There have been some other—deliberate—mistakes. Some acts of incompetence have been admitted afterwards, such as whether a nought should have been added to the £700,000 that Westminster was expected to receive in flood protection money so that it became £7 million. I refer also to the £60 a head for Westminster residents to prevent us all from falling even deeper into the mire every time we step out of this place; that is what residents of Westminster are receiving in the form of the drainage allowance that has been allocated to them this year.
The whole incompetent gerrymandering muddle we are in at the moment is the fault of the Government, and I must tell the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. French) that it is disgraceful to blame local authorities for it. Local authorities did not ask for this tax. They warned again and again about the administrative chaos that would result from it, and from the late changes that were introduced, and from the way in which computer systems had to be altered and rebates and transitional help, such as what is known in the Department of the Environment as Pendle help, had to be introduced. All these changes made it impossible for local authorities to manage, and even the Government admitted as much only three months ago.
So the chaos and difficulties are down to the Conservative party. The only reason why we have the standard poll tax, to which the hon. Member for Gloucester referred, is that the Government needed to pretend that they had done away with any sort of domestic property tax, which is what the standard poll tax is. It is clumsy and unfair, and it leads to all the anomalies that have been spelt out. There are many worse anomalies than those mentioned by the hon. Member for Gloucester; they concern people who have died, and people in residential care who cannot get rid of their properties, even if they happen to be in sheltered accommodation on which the poll tax is being levied. I know of units of sheltered accommodation with community facilities which are the subject of attempts to impose the national business rate on them.
I hope that all hon. Members will join in agreeing with the Secretary of State that it is time for a thorough re-examination of what this tax is all about. If we cannot persuade the Government to do away with it, we should be happy if they ameliorated it.
We do care—I strongly object to what was said earlier about this—about what is happening to people. We ran rebate campaigns as a party, not just through Labour local government. We had a rebate week in February and we appealed to people to do everything that they could to spread the message about rebates. We refute the scurrilous allegation that we are in some way pleased that people are suffering this pain now. We are not; we voted and spoke against the tax.
When we warned that the standard spending assessments would not work and were not acceptable bases

for the judgment that would be made on them, we were right, and everyone in the House knows that we were. Poll tax-capping exemplifies the fact that we were. Some poll tax-capped authorities like Islington were not going to be poll tax-capped if they had been given the SSAs announced on 6 November, but they were capped because of the changes made by 18 January. One cannot imagine a dafter system than one which catches people in a net, for no fault of their own, which would not originally have caught them.
Authorities had no chance of altering their budgets, because by 18 January any competent authority had already set its budget and gone through all the processes of examining its departmental spending, and knew exactly what it would do. Such retrospective action is not only unacceptable but leads to further incompetence.
At Question Time today I asked the Minister of State to confirm or deny the simple truth that the Government got it drastically wrong about who would gain and who would lose. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said earlier, when in December 1987 the then Secretary of State for the Environment said that the standard poll tax would be £178, we all doubled up with laughter. He said that at that level there would be a standard provision of service throughout the country. When it became £278 that myth was still being peddled. We were told that there would be no targets, but targets were introduced. They are used not for poll tax capping but for discriminating against people to prevent them from getting the transitional help to which they are entitled.
Then we had the real poll tax. Warnings were given in Committee; that is why the indifference is so important in terms of this debate. In the Committee debate two years ago, Conservative Members burst into laughter when it was reported that the Church of England Synod had voted against the poll tax. Conservative Members are not laughing so much now, and a little more concern would be forthcoming if people would think a little about the real impact clearly spelt out by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell).
Genuine hurt and pain are being experienced in Scotland and they are being transferred to England and Wales. People should pay heed to the fact that families and individuals are being hard hit. Disabled people are often hardest hit because of the repeal of the Rating (Disabled Persons) Act 1978. They face enormous changes in their benefits, which are often ignored by the press.
People should recognise the difficulties being faced by the two thirds of elderly people who are losing as a result of the tax. I challenged the Minister earlier about the 28 million losers and I shall be interested in his reply. I could spell out the detail of who gains and who loses. In the early days, the Government said that single pensioners would be the great gainers from the tax. They lost out under the old rating system, and two thirds of single pensioners are losing under the poll tax.
The answer given to me on 19 April by the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security spelled out that 2 million of those entitled to rebate receive it as part of couples when one of them receives the rebate and the other member of the household has no income. Instead of paying 20 per cent. of the total bill, as they did under the rating system, they will have to pay 40 per cent. even when they are entitled to full rebate, because each has to pay the basic 20 per cent. of the poll tax. That is a considerable injustice that needs to be remedied.
We all hope that the Secretary of State will do what he said he would do and will be willing to take evidence, because there is plenty of evidence against the poll tax. He should be willing to listen and learn, and if he does that he will understand what he is doing to authorities such as Calderdale. It has a poll tax imposition which reduces it to the fourth lowest in the country. It has a poll tax level that is £200 lower than that set by Conservative authorities in Surrey and Berkshire. And what about the position of Barnsley? I know Barnsley well because I worked there.
The Government are destroying the most basic services and are undermining the most basic education opportunity for youngsters. That borough, in the heart of the south Yorkshire coalfield, must be able to alleviate the problems that people face. [Interruption.] Hon. Members who jeer should go there and look and learn for themselves. That applies to Wigan, St. Helens, Rotherham and Doncaster—a cluster of authorities that have been discriminated against because of the inadequacy of the SSAs.

Mr. Allen McKay: We should get rid of the Government.

Mr. Blunkett: That is the answer.
What will help to bring about more rapid change in the poll tax, by bringing greater pressure to bear on Conservative Back Benchers and making the Secretary of State more amenable, will be not a Conservative victory, as the hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) suggested, but a substantial Labour victory.
I issue three simple challenges to the Government: confirm or deny the gainers and losers that we have spelt out; confirm or deny that the SSAs are so flawed that they will have to be changed this summer and that other drastic changes to revise the poll tax are needed to make it acceptable in the run-up to the general election; confirm or deny that they are willing to make available the finance and the facilities that they have, through the Department of the Environment, so that the Labour party can look at the figures that it will inherit when it gets into government. The Government are using public money to develop their proposals and their alternatives to the poll tax, because that is what it is all about.
I make three pledges on behalf of the Opposition. Our tax will be fairer and will be based on ability to pay. It will have more gainers than losers. It will remove capping and restore freedom, autonomy and democracy to local people.

The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. David Hunt): I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) for the generous and courteous remarks that he made at the start of his speech. I much enjoy debating with him. I recognise that he has great respect for the office that I am honoured to hold. I have enjoyed working closely with local government, in particular on the issues that do not divide us on a party basis.
Here we are now, in Opposition time, debating the community charge. When we last had a debate similar to this, the Labour party made many accusations about how the administration of the community charge would be a great disaster come 1 April, that the bills would not contain rebates or transitional relief and that it would be impossible to meet the targets. I commend community

charge officers, because local government has done a first-class job in the administration of the charge. Almost every bill that has been, and will go, through letter boxes has the rebate and transitional relief already calculated.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham) put the point simply. He said that an Opposition day—we are discussing the community charge today—is a marvellous opportunity, and one that Oppositions normally choose to lay their policies before the House. We have waited for that with great patience—I had high hopes of the hon. Member for Brightside but—we are still waiting. This has been another shameful day for the Labour party. It chose to debate local government finance today, yet where its policy on such a crucial matter should be there is a gap about as wide as the Leader of the Opposition's habitual grin, and just about as useful.
I have enjoyed listening to 23 speeches. They have all been important in their own right, and the speeches of the Opposition Members have been important in their great diversity. All Opposition Members have a different idea of what the Opposition's policy should be.
I always respect the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), who told us that he did not want the Labour party to go naked into any election. He produced his clothing, which was a floor tax. He said that he was attracted by the idea of a form of capital rate associated with a tax on income. The hon. Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) presented us with his idea. He said, "Let us all get together round a table to try to work out a better alternative." The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said, "Why don't we"—presumably he was referring to his colleagues on the Opposition Front Bench—"drop all these ideas and go back to domestic rates?" The hon. Member for Brightside referred to "We in the Labour laboratory working out a solution." I await the product of the test tube with great interest.
I think that the hon. Member for Brightside answered himself. At the end of his speech he said to my right hon. and hon. Friends, "Will you please help us?" Did m) right hon. and hon. Friends catch that? In effect, he said "We do not think that we, the Opposition, have the equipment to work out an alternative. Will you please help us?' That must be the lowest point for the Labour party.
I congratulate the Opposition on having the courage to opt for a full day's debate on local government finance instead of a half-day debate. When the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) started the debate at 3.30 pm he had no way of being sure that at 10 pm the Labour party's policy would still be the same. Over the past three years. the Labour party has switched policies about 52 times. about once every three weeks. In May 1987, it started with the idea of capital value rates. The hon. Member for Dagenham torpedoed that straight away. In fairness to him, I suppose that the Leader of the Opposition did too, but probably he thought that capital value rates was a system of cheap bus fares in London. The Labour party torpedoed its own policy during the general election.
Following that fiasco came the famous press conference of 20 July 1988. When the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) was asked what it was all about, he explained that its purpose was to announce the Labour party's alternative policy.

Mr. Blunkett: What about your policy?

Mr. Hunt: This is an Opposition Supply day.
From the fiasco emerged the two-tax twin torture. The Opposition could not decide whether to have a property tax or a local income tax. Rather than making a choice—choice has never been the Opposition's strong point—they decided to take both. I can tell the hon. Member for Brightside that we ran it through the computer and came up with figures, and they dropped the idea almost immediately.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Hunt: Many Opposition Members have not been here for the debate. I am replying to points made during the debate.
I listened carefully to the points made about charge capping by the hon. Members for Barnsley, Central (Mr. Insley), for Leigh (Mr. Cunliffe), for Barnsley, West and Penistone, for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) and for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon). However, we are in the midst of a statutory period, during which their councils have an opportunity to put forward alternatives to the proposed caps. It would be inappropriate for me to comment in detail, other than to say that the hon. Members made their points robustly and clearly.

Mr. Donald Thompson: I have been here for the whole debate. My hon. Friend has just mentioned Halifax. He will be pleased to know that the Halifax Courier, an independent newspaper, carried out a survey—we have heard a great deal about surveys—that showed that the majority, some 75 per cent., of the people of Halifax are in favour of charge capping. My hon. Friend will also be pleased to know that there is a budget before Calderdale council that will meet the charge cap without any cuts in services. It is a Conservative budget.

Mrs. Mahon: rose—

Mr. Hunt: I believe that it is the practice in the House to respond to one intervention before giving way again. I shall give way to the hon. Lady in a moment. Opposition Members will appreciate the fact that I gave way to my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson), because I knew that he would give us the facts.

Mrs. Mahon: I promise that I will not do what the Secretary of State did yesterday when he came to Halifax, and mention dog dirt. Does he accept that, if the Halifax Courier ran a telephone survey asking, "Would the people of Halifax prefer to pay nothing for services?", everyone would say yes?

Mr. Hunt: I now wish that I had not given way to the hon. Lady.
The hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway) made a speech that I thought made a nauseating noise about non-payment, and I shall come to that in a moment. There was also a speech on Scotland from the hon. Member for Linlithgow, in which he asked questions. If I do not have the time to respond to any points raised in the debate, I shall reply in writing. I should greatly regret it if any public servant anywhere had to worry about whether he might be subjected to either verbal or physical abuse. My response is to condemn verbal and physical abuse. There has been a great deal of such abuse in the displays by the anti-poll tax demonstrators. I have not seen that in the immediate past, and I hope that it is

now at an end and that it will never return. My hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) made a very good speech. As he responded to three speeches from Scottish Opposition Members, I shall not dwell on them now.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones), who made a robust and effective speech—so much so that he stimulated the hon. Members for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) and for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) into a bout of, I am sure, uncharacteristic heckling. I look forward to working closely with my hon. Friend in the coming months. He made a point about standard charges, to which a number of my hon. Friends also referred.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North-West mentioned a number of instances of standard charges, and two particular cases were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. French). Standard charges were also referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover). I have said—my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester mentioned my parliamentary answer—that we shall carefully examine instances where local authorities failed to exercise their discretion to mitigate hardship cases.

Mr. Toby Jessel: Will my hon. Friend the Minister also examine carefully the position of the 15,000 people who live on houseboats—200 of them in my constituency? As well as being expected to pay the community charge, they are asked to contribute a share of the uniform business rate chargeable to the owner of the riparian land who rents the moorings to them. It is difficult for them to refuse making that payment, because they do not have security of tenure at their moorings.

Mr. Hunt: My understanding is that, where a houseboat is the sole or main residence, its occupants will pay the personal community charge but that the boat and the mooring will not be rateable. Where the boat is not permanently moored at a fixed mooring, or where the boat is permanently moored but is not a sole or main residence, non-domestic rates are payable.
I say to all my right hon. and hon. Friends and to Opposition Members who raised points of detail that we state clearly in the amendment that we are determined to listen to constructive suggestions for improving the new system. We include in the amendment the assurance that when we decide that there is a need to improve, we shall implement promptly any necessary changes.

Mr. Rooker: Given the regard in which the House holds the Minister, he does himself a disservice in not referring once to the speeches of the hon. Members for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) and for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), which contained positive, constructive alternatives.

Mr. Hunt: I wish that I had not allowed the hon. Gentleman to intervene, because I said clearly to all my right hon. and hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack) and for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) that, as the amendment says, we shall listen to any suggestions to improve the system.
I return to the point that on this Opposition day, the Opposition had an opportunity to put forward their policies. We have heard no policies. I remind the Leader of the Opposition who has now entered the fray, having


escaped the Mandelson leash, that he said that the way in which they were going to organise and think through their policies was to see what they could put together and then 
bung it into the computer.
That is the Opposition's policy.
Opposition Members will have no credibility in the House until they come up with a clear policy and they stop leaflets such as the one I have here from the Lewisham anti-poll tax union, which is in the name of the Hither Green Labour party, and unless they stop endorsing law breakers. They have no policies. In the amendment we have pledged that we shall listen carefully to all the suggestions made. We should throw out the motion and vote for the amendment.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—

The House divided: Ayes, 207, Noes 301.

Division No. 178]
[10.00 pm


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Dobson, Frank


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Doran, Frank


Allen, Graham
Duffy, A. E. P.


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Dunnachie, Jimmy


Armstrong, Hilary
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth


Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy
Eadie, Alexander


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Evans, John (St Helens N)


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Fatchett, Derek


Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)
Faulds, Andrew


Barron, Kevin
Fearn, Ronald


Battle, John
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Beckett, Margaret
Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)


Beggs, Roy
Flannery, Martin


Beith, A. J.
Flynn, Paul


Bell, Stuart
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Foster, Derek


Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n &amp; R'dish)
Foulkes, George


Bermingham, Gerald
Fraser, John


Bidwell, Sydney
Fyfe, Maria


Blair, Tony
Galloway, George


Blunkett, David
Garrett, John (Norwich South)


Boateng, Paul
George, Bruce


Bradley, Keith
Golding, Mrs Llin


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
Gould, Bryan


Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Graham, Thomas


Buchan, Norman
Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)


Buckley, George J.
Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)


Caborn, Richard
Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)


Callaghan, Jim
Grocott, Bruce


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Hardy, Peter


Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)
Harman, Ms Harriet


Canavan, Dennis
Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy


Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)
Heal, Mrs Sylvia


Cartwright, John
Healey, Rt Hon Denis


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Henderson, Doug


Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Hinchliffe, David


Clay, Bob
Hoey, Ms Kate (Vauxhall)


Clelland, David
Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Home Robertson, John


Coleman, Donald
Hood, Jimmy


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)


Corbett, Robin
Hoyle, Doug


Corbyn, Jeremy
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Cousins, Jim
Hughes, Roy (Newport E)


Cox, Tom
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Crowther, Stan
Illsley, Eric


Cryer, Bob
Ingram, Adam


Cummings, John
Janner, Greville


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Johnston, Sir Russell


Cunningham, Dr John
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Dalyell, Tam
Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)


Darling, Alistair
Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)


Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
Kennedy, Charles


Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)
Kilfedder, James


Dixon, Don
Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil





Kirkwood, Archy
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Lambie, David
Reid, Dr John


Leadbitter, Ted
Richardson, Jo


Leighton, Ron
Robertson, George


Lestor, Joan (Eccles)
Robinson, Geoffrey


Lewis, Terry
Rogers, Allan


Litherland, Robert
Rooker, Jeff


Livingstone, Ken
Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)


Livsey, Richard
Rowlands, Ted


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Ruddock, Joan


Lofthouse, Geoffrey
Salmond, Alex


McAllion, John
Sedgemore, Brian


McAvoy, Thomas
Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert


McFall, John
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


McKelvey, William
Short, Clare


McLeish, Henry
Sillars, Jim


Maclennan, Robert
Skinner, Dennis


McNamara, Kevin
Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)


McWilliam, John
Smith, C. (Isl'ton &amp; F'bury)


Madden, Max
Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)


Mahon, Mrs Alice
Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)


Marek, Dr John
Soley, Clive


Marshall, David (Shettleston)
Spearing, Nigel


Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Steel, Rt Hon Sir David


Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)
Steinberg, Gerry


Martlew, Eric
Strang, Gavin


Meacher, Michael
Straw, Jack


Meale, Alan
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Michael, Alun
Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)


Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)
Turner, Dennis


Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l &amp; Bute)
Vaz, Keith


Moonie, Dr Lewis
Wallace, James


Morgan, Rhodri
Walley, Joan


Morley, Elliot
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)
Wareing, Robert N.


Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)


Mowlam, Marjorie
Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)


Murphy, Paul
Wigley, Dafydd


Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


O'Brien, William
Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)


O'Neill, Martin
Winnick, David


Parry, Robert
Wise, Mrs Audrey


Patchett, Terry
Worthington, Tony


Pike, Peter L.
Wray, Jimmy


Powell, Ray (Ogmore)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Prescott, John



Primarolo, Dawn
Tellers for the Ayes:


Quin, Ms Joyce
Mr. Allen McKay, and Mr. Frank Haynes.


Radice, Giles



Redmond, Martin





NOES


Aitken, Jonathan
Bottomley, Mrs Virginia


Alexander, Richard
Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)


Allason, Rupert
Bowis, John


Amess, David
Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard


Amos, Alan
Brandon-Bravo, Martin


Arbuthnot, James
Brazier, Julian


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Bright, Graham


Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)
Brooke, Rt Hon Peter


Ashby, David
Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)


Aspinwall, Jack
Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)


Atkins, Robert
Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick


Atkinson, David
Buck, Sir Antony


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Budgen, Nicholas


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Burns, Simon


Baldry, Tony
Burt, Alistair


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Butcher, John


Batiste, Spencer
Butler, Chris


Bellingham, Henry
Butterfill, John


Bendall, Vivian
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)


Bevan, David Gilroy
Carrington, Matthew


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Carttiss, Michael


Body, Sir Richard
Cash, William


Bonsor, Sir Nicholas
Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Channon, Rt Hon Paul


Boswell, Tim
Chapman, Sydney


Bottomley, Peter
Chope, Christopher






Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)
Janman, Tim


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Jessel, Toby


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
Jones, Robert B (Herts W)


Colvin, Michael
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Conway, Derek
Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Key, Robert


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)


Couchman, James
Kirkhope, Timothy


Cran, James
Knapman, Roger


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Lamont, Rt Hon Norman


Day, Stephen
Lang, Ian


Devlin, Tim
Lawrence, Ivan


Dickens, Geoffrey
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Dorrell, Stephen
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Lightbown, David


Dover, Den
Lilley, Peter


Dunn, Bob
Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)


Eggar, Tim
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Emery, Sir Peter
Lord, Michael


Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)
Luce, Rt Hon Richard


Evennett, David
Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas


Fallon, Michael
McCrindle, Robert


Farr, Sir John
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Favell, Tony
MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)


Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)
Maclean, David


Fookes, Dame Janet
McLoughlin, Patrick


Forman, Nigel
McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael


Forth, Eric
McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick


Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman
Madel, David


Fox, Sir Marcus
Major, Rt Hon John


Franks, Cecil
Malins, Humfrey


Freeman, Roger
Mans, Keith


French, Douglas
Maples, John


Fry, Peter
Marland, Paul


Gale, Roger
Marlow, Tony


Gardiner, George
Marshall, John (Hendon S)


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


Glyn, Dr Sir Alan
Martin, David (Portsmouth S)


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Maude, Hon Francis


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Gow, Ian
Mellor, David


Greenway, Harry (Baling N)
Miller, Sir Hal


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


Gregory, Conal
Mitchell, Sir David


Grist, Ian
Moate, Roger


Ground, Patrick
Monro, Sir Hector


Grylls, Michael
Montgomery, Sir Fergus


Hague, William
Moore, Rt Hon John


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Morris, M (N'hampton S)


Hanley, Jeremy
Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)


Hannam, John
Moss, Malcolm


Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')
Moynihan, Hon Colin


Harris, David
Neale, Gerrard


Haselhurst, Alan
Needham, Richard


Hawkins, Christopher
Nelson, Anthony


Hayes, Jerry
Neubert, Michael


Hayward, Robert
Newton, Rt Hon Tony


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Nicholls, Patrick


Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)
Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Norris, Steve


Hill, James
Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley


Hind, Kenneth
Oppenheim, Phillip


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Page, Richard


Holt, Richard
Paice, James


Hordern, Sir Peter
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Patnick, Irvine


Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)
Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)


Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)
Patten, Rt Hon John


Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)
Pawsey, James


Hunt, David (Wirral W)
Porter, Barry (Wirral S)


Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)
Porter, David (Waveney)


Hunter, Andrew
Portillo, Michael


Irving, Sir Charles
Powell, William (Corby)


Jack, Michael
Price, Sir David


Jackson, Robert
Raffan, Keith





Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Redwood, John
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Renton, Rt Hon Tim
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Rhodes James, Robert
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Riddick, Graham
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Thorne, Neil


Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Thornton, Malcolm


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Thurnham, Peter


Roe, Mrs Marion
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Rost, Peter
Tracey, Richard


Rowe, Andrew
Tredinnick, David


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Trippier, David


Ryder, Richard
Trotter, Neville


Sackville, Hon Tom
Twinn, Dr Ian


Sayeed, Jonathan
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas
Viggers, Peter


Shaw, David (Dover)
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Waldegrave, Rt Hon William


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Walden, George


Shelton, Sir William
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)
Waller, Gary


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Ward, John


Shersby, Michael
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Sims, Roger
Warren, Kenneth


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Watts, John


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Wells, Bowen


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Wheeler, Sir John


Speed, Keith
Whitney, Ray


Speller, Tony
Widdecombe, Ann


Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)
Wiggin, Jerry


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Wilkinson, John


Squire, Robin
Wilshire, David


Stanbrook, Ivor
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Steen, Anthony
Wolfson, Mark


Stern, Michael
Wood, Timothy


Stevens, Lewis
Woodcock, Dr. Mike


Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)
Yeo, Tim


Stewart, Rt Hon Ian (Herts N)
Younger, Rt Hon George


Stokes, Sir John



Stradling Thomas, Sir John
Tellers for the Noes:


Sumberg, David
Mr. Alastair Goodlad and Mr. Tony Durant.


Summerson, Hugo



Tapsell, Sir Peter

Question accordingly negatived.

Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to standing Order No.30 (Questions on amendments):—

The House divided: Ayes 290, Noes 201.

Division No. 179]
[10.14 pm


AYES


Aitken, Jonathan
Boswell, Tim


Alexander, Richard
Bottomley, Peter


Alison, Rt Hon Michael
Bottomley, Mrs Virginia


Allason, Rupert
Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)


Amess, David
Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)


Amos, Alan
Bowis, John


Arbuthnot, James
Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Brandon-Bravo, Martin


Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)
Brazier, Julian


Ashby, David
Bright, Graham


Aspinwall, Jack
Brooke, Rt Hon Peter


Atkins, Robert
Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)


Atkinson, David
Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Buck, Sir Antony


Baldry, Tony
Budgen, Nicholas


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Burns, Simon


Batiste, Spencer
Burt, Alistair


Bellingham, Henry
Butcher, John


Bendall, Vivian
Butler, Chris


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Butterfill, John


Bevan, David Gilroy
Carlisle, John, (Luton N)


Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)


Body, Sir Richard
Carrington, Matthew


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Carttiss, Michael






Cash, William
Jackson, Robert


Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda
Janman, Tim


Channon, Rt Hon Paul
Jessel, Toby


Chapman, Sydney
Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)


Chope, Christopher
Jones, Robert B (Herts W)


Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)
Jopling, Rt Hon Michael


Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)
Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine


Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)
Key, Robert


Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)
King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)


Conway, Derek
Kirkhope, Timothy


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Knapman, Roger


Coombs, Simon (Swindon)
Knight, Greg (Derby North)


Couchman, James
Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)


Cran, James
Lamont, Rt Hon Norman


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Lang, Ian


Davies, Q. (Stamf'd &amp; Spald'g)
Lawrence, Ivan


Davis, David (Boothferry)
Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)


Day, Stephen
Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark


Devlin, Tim
Lilley, Peter


Dorrell, Stephen
Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)


Dover, Den
Lord, Michael


Dunn, Bob
Luce, Rt Hon Richard


Eggar, Tim
Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas


Emery, Sir Peter
McCrindle, Robert


Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)
MacGregor, Rt Hon John


Evennett, David
MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)


Fallon, Michael
Maclean, David


Favell, Tony
McLoughlin, Patrick


Fookes, Dame Janet
McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael


Forman, Nigel
McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick


Forth, Eric
Madel, David


Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman
Major, Rt Hon John


Fox, Sir Marcus
Malins, Humfrey


Franks, Cecil
Mans, Keith


Freeman, Roger
Maples, John


French, Douglas
Marland, Paul


Fry, Peter
Marlow, Tony


Gale, Roger
Marshall, John (Hendon S)


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)


Glyn, Dr Sir Alan
Martin, David (Portsmouth S)


Goodlad, Alastair
Maude, Hon Francis


Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles
Mawhinney, Dr Brian


Gorman, Mrs Teresa
Mellor, David


Gow, Ian
Miller, Sir Hal


Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


Greenway, John (Ryedale)
Mitchell, Sir David


Gregory, Conal
Moate, Roger


Grist, Ian
Monro, Sir Hector


Ground, Patrick
Montgomery, Sir Fergus


Grylls, Michael
Moore, Rt Hon John


Hague, William
Morris, M (N'hampton S)


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)


Hanley, Jeremy
Moss, Malcolm


Hannam, John
Moynihan, Hon Colin


Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')
Neale, Gerrard


Harris, David
Needham, Richard


Haselhurst, Alan
Nelson, Anthony


Hawkins, Christopher
Neubert, Michael


Hayes, Jerry
Newton, Rt Hon Tony


Hayward, Robert
Nicholls, Patrick


Heathcoat-Amory, David
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)
Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Norris, Steve


Hill, James
Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley


Hind, Kenneth
Oppenheim, Phillip


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Page, Richard


Holt, Richard
Paice, James


Hordern, Sir Peter
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Patnick, Irvine


Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)
Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)


Howarth, G. (Cannock &amp; B'wd)
Patten, Rt Hon John


Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)
Pawsey, James


Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)
Porter, Barry (Wirral S)


Hunt, David (Wirral W)
Porter, David (Waveney)


Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)
Portillo, Michael


Hunter, Andrew
Powell, William (Corby)


Irving, Sir Charles
Price, Sir David


Jack, Michael
Raffan, Keith





Raison, Rt Hon Timothy
Tapsell, Sir Peter


Redwood, John
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Renton, Rt Hon Tim
Taylor, John M (Solihull)


Rhodes James, Robert
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Riddick, Graham
Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman


Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas
Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)


Ridsdale, Sir Julian
Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)


Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm
Thorne, Neil


Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)
Thornton, Malcolm


Roe, Mrs Marion
Thurnham, Peter


Rossi, Sir Hugh
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Rost, Peter
Tracey, Richard


Rowe, Andrew
Tredinnick, David


Rumbold, Mrs Angela
Trippier, David


Ryder, Richard
Trotter, Neville


Sackville, Hon Tom
Twinn, Dr Ian


Sayeed, Jonathan
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Shaw, David (Dover)
Viggers, Peter


Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)
Wakeham, Rt Hon John


Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')
Walden, George


Shelton, Sir William
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)
Waller, Gary


Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)
Ward, John


Shersby, Michael
Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)


Sims, Roger
Warren, Kenneth


Skeet, Sir Trevor
Watts, John


Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)
Wells, Bowen


Soames, Hon Nicholas
Wheeler, Sir John


Speed, Keith
Whitney, Ray


Speller, Tony
Widdecombe, Ann


Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)
Wiggin, Jerry


Squire, Robin
Wilkinson, John


Stanbrook, Ivor
Wilshire, David


Steen, Anthony
Wolfson, Mark


Stern, Michael
Wood, Timothy


Stevens, Lewis
Woodcock, Dr. Mike


Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)
Yeo, Tim


Stewart, Rt Hon Ian (Herts N)
Younger, Rt Hon George


Stokes, Sir John



Stradling Thomas, Sir John
Tellers for the Ayes:


Sumberg, David
Mr. Tony Durant and Mr. David Lightbown.


Summerson, Hugo





NOES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Coleman, Donald


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Cook, Robin (Livingston)


Allen, Graham
Corbett, Robin


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Corbyn, Jeremy


Armstrong, Hilary
Cousins, Jim


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Cox, Tom


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Crowther, Stan


Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)
Cryer, Bob


Barron, Kevin
Cummings, John


Battle, John
Cunliffe, Lawrence


Beckett, Margaret
Cunningham, Dr John


Beith, A. J.
Dalyell, Tam


Bell, Stuart
Darling, Alistair


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)


Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n &amp; R'dish)
Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)


Bermingham, Gerald
Davis, Terry (B'ham Hodge H'l)


Bidwell, Sydney
Dixon, Don


Blair, Tony
Dobson, Frank


Blunkett, David
Doran, Frank


Boateng, Paul
Duffy, A. E. P.


Bradley, Keith
Dunnachie, Jimmy


Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)
Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth


Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)
Eadie, Alexander


Buchan, Norman
Evans, John (St Helens N)


Buckley, George J.
Fatchett, Derek


Caborn, Richard
Faulds, Andrew


Callaghan, Jim
Fearn, Ronald


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Field, Frank (Birkenhead)


Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)
Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)


Canavan, Dennis
Flannery, Martin


Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)
Flynn, Paul


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)
Foster, Derek


Clay, Bob
Foulkes, George


Clelland, David
Fraser, John


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Fyfe, Maria






Galloway, George
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Garrett, John (Norwich South)
Lofthouse, Geoffrey


George, Bruce
McAllion, John


Golding, Mrs Llin
McAvoy, Thomas


Gordon, Mildred
McFall, John


Graham, Thomas
McKelvey, William


Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)
McLeish, Henry


Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)
Maclennan, Robert


Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)
McNamara, Kevin


Grocott, Bruce
McWilliam, John


Hardy, Peter
Madden, Max


Harman, Ms Harriet
Mahon, Mrs Alice


Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy
Marek, Dr John


Heal, Mrs Sylvia
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Healey, Rt Hon Denis
Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)


Henderson, Doug
Martlew, Eric


Hinchliffe, David
Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin


Hoey, Ms Kate (Vauxhall)
Meacher, Michael


Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)
Meale, Alan


Home Robertson, John
Michael, Alun


Hood, Jimmy
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l &amp; Bute)


Hoyle, Doug
Moonie, Dr Lewis


Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Morgan, Rhodri


Hughes, Roy (Newport E)
Morley, Elliot


Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Illsley, Eric
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Ingram, Adam
Mowlam, Marjorie


Janner, Greville
Murphy, Paul


Johnston, Sir Russell
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
O'Brien, William


Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)
O'Neill, Martin


Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)
Parry, Robert


Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald
Patchett, Terry


Kennedy, Charles
Pike, Peter L.


Kilfedder, James
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil
Prescott, John


Kirkwood, Archy
Primarolo, Dawn


Lambie, David
Quin, Ms Joyce


Leadbitter, Ted
Radice, Giles


Leighton, Ron
Redmond, Martin


Lestor, Joan (Eccles)
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Lewis, Terry
Reid, Dr John


Litherland, Robert
Richardson, Jo


Livingstone, Ken
Robinson, Geoffrey


Livsey, Richard
Rogers, Allan





Rooker, Jeff
Turner, Dennis


Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)
Vaz, Keith


Rowlands, Ted
Wallace, James


Ruddock, Joan
Walley, Joan


Salmond, Alex
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Sedgemore, Brian
Wareing, Robert N.


Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert
Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)


Shore, Rt Hon Peter
Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)


Short, Clare
Wigley, Dafydd


Sillars, Jim
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


Skinner, Dennis
Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)


Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)
Winnick, David


Smith, C. (Isl'ton &amp; F'bury)
Wise, Mrs Audrey


Soley, Clive
Worthington, Tony


Spearing, Nigel
Wray, Jimmy


Steel, Rt Hon Sir David
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Steinberg, Gerry



Strang, Gavin
Tellers for the Noes:


Straw, Jack
Mr. Frank Haynes and Mr. Allen McKay.


Taylor, Matthew (Truro)



Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Question accordingly agreed to.

MR. SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.

Resolved,
That this House believes that almost every adult should make some contribution towards the cost of local services from which they benefit, with relief for the less well off; welcomes the embodiment of those principles in the community charge; notes that the scale and pattern of payments is related to ability to pay with 10 million people receiving rebates at a cost of £2·5 billion; welcomes the willingness of the Government to listen to constructive suggestions for improving the new system with a view to prompt implementation of any necessary changes; further notes that living under Labour costs people more; and deplores the fact that the Labour Party have not had the courage or honesty to come forward with their own proposals before the local elections on 3rd May.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the War Crimes Bill may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Fallon.]

Orders of the Day — War Crimes Bill

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered

Clause 1

JURISDICTION OVER CERTAIN WAR CRIMES

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 1, line 10, leave out from 'with' to end of line 11 and insert '15th August 1945'.

Mr. Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take amendment No. 3, in title, line 2, leave out from `committed' to 'during' in line 3.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: The purpose of the amendments, the second of which is a consequential amendment to the long title, is twofold. It removes the territorial restriction on the operation of the Bill. It is always bad law to pass criminal law which is ad hominem. There can be no justification, if there is any justification for the Bill, in confining its provisions to the crimes of the nature covered in German-occupied territory. There is no reason whatever why it should not extend to Japanese-occupied territory. If the Bill is passed, how can we look in the face any constituent whose husband was murdered by the Japanese army? How can we conceivably justify legislating within the confines of the Bill?
Amendment No. 2 does two things. It substitutes the end of the second world war for the end of the war in Europe. It substitutes VJ day, the end of the second world war, for VE day, which so inappropriately appears in the Bill, as if the war ended on 5 June 1945, which it did not. The amendment also removes the territorial restriction. Even if that provision had been left in, it would be to the enrichment of lawyers and the prolongation of trials.

Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: It is anyway.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: My hon. Friend says that it is anyway.
What is a place which at the time was part of Germany or under German occupation? Does it mean, for instance the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, which was declared by the Germans to be part of Germany but not recognised as such by Great Britain? What about territory occupied by the Hungarian army, the Romanian army or the Italian army, all of which fought on the Russian front?
What is a place? Is a place a country, a province, one of the Nazi German protectorates, such as the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia? Is it a town, is it a village, is it a house, is it a field? What is a place? It is an absurd piece of drafting. The whole of that nonsense would be got rid of if amendment No. 2 were accepted and with it consequentially amendment No. 3 to the long title.

Mr. Kenneth Hind: I rise to oppose the amendment. I have great respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) and the anxieties that he has expressed throughout the debates on the War Crimes Bill. However, I stress that the Bill was introduced following the Hetherington-Chalmers report.
It was specifically devised to deal with war crimes committed by the German Nazi party and its allies in Western Europe and not with any other problems.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Hind: I shall give way in a moment if my hon. Friend will allow me to finish my argument. The Bill was introduced against the background, following what Winston Churchill called the fall of the iron curtain, of no information being passed from eastern Europe to the western nations, particularly those involved in the Nuremberg trials, that would provide them with evidence to bring people who had committed war crimes in eastern Europe to trial. As a consequence, during the period immediately after the war, many people who had been involved in war crimes in eastern Europe fled to the west but were not accompanied by the flow of information that was necessary to bring them to trial and convict them under the law at the time.
The position has now changed. Because of glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet Union, there has been a flow of information which has enabled us to re-examine the cases of many people who fled from eastern Europe. They fled as legitimate refugees then, but it is now clear that they were either Nazi sympathisers, members of the SS or involved in committing atrocities behind what was then regarded as the iron curtain. Previously we had no evidence to bring them to trial. That is the logic behind the Bill. It is specific and localised towards that particular problem.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton seeks—commendably—to extend the Bill to all war crimes, particularly those committed in Japan. I ask him to examine the question of Japan carefully. Large numbers of people came to the United Kingdom from eastern Europe—Lithuania, Estonia, the Ukraine and parts of Russia—claiming that they were political refugees escaping from possible persecution in the Soviet Union. There is no parallel between that and Japan or other countries. We must recognise that the Bill has been introduced to deal with people who are resident in the United Kingdom. It gives powers to deal with them in the British courts. There is clearly no parallel with people from Japan who were involved in committing war crimes against British subjects in the far east, emigrated to this country and settled here. For that reason, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton should think again about the amendment.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: My hon. Friend inadvertently used the phrase "Germany and its allies." We make the point that Germany's allies are not covered by the Bill, but only Germans and German-occupied territory. Does my hon. Friend recognise that it is bad law to pass laws specific to certain individuals but which do not cover all war crimes committed in the second world war?

Mr. Hind: I accept my hon. Friend's point that my use of the word "allies" was loose. I had in mind those allies in Europe and those from parts of the Soviet Union who fought alongside the German forces. The right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) said that many of them found themselves in occupied Vichy France. Those are the people about whom I am concerned.
The allies referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton—the Japanese and those in the far east—


should not be covered by the Bill because there was no major immigration from that part of the world to the United Kingdom. They did not place themselves within the jurisdiction of the British courts and are therefore not eligible to be dealt with in this way.

Mr. Bennett: rose—

Mr. Hind: I am sure that my hon. Friend will have an opportunity to make his own speech.
I cannot emphasise strongly enough that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton is seeking to bring into the remit of the Bill those who do not fall within our jurisdiction and for whom we do not have the evidence or people to deal with in Britain today.
One criticism that has been made of the Bill is the fact that we are looking back to the past, and it is retrospective legislation. I believe it should be used only in special circumstances which arise in relation to factors with which we can deal. It is within our power, as a Parliament, to create a body of laws to deal with a particular problem. We are doing that. We are not doing so in relation to the problem put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton, because that problem does not exist. Therefore, I urge the House to reject the amendment.

Mr. John Marshall: I shall be brief, because I know that the shorter my speech is the more popular it will be with some of my colleagues.
I feel strongly that the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) is not sensible. My hon. Friend talks about widening the Bill's scope to include, for example, the Japanese. But there is not one iota of evidence that there is one former Japanese war criminal in the United Kingdom. We know from the Hetherington-Chalmers report that there are former German war criminals in the United Kingdom.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: How do we know that there are not? Who has looked for them? There is no Japanese equivalent of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. How can my hon. Friend say that there are no such criminals here?

Mr. Marshall: I should have thought it was quite obvious that there are no Japanese war criminals in the United Kingdom. If my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and his friends believe that there are, they should name names in the House. There is not one iota of evidence; this is just a pure charade to try to weaken the Bill and a strong case.
One should remember that we were dealing with a war machine that was the most foul ever known to this country. On Sunday I was walking around my constituency and noticed on someone's door that this was holocaust day; people were remembering all their relatives who had died. There are people in this country who lost their father, mother, grandparents and uncles, and their brothers, sisters and cousins. Some lost 30 or 40 close relatives—all killed by the Nazi war machine. It was the most evil mass murder known in the history of mankind.
We have never had a statute of limitations on murder, and I do not believe that we should introduce one this evening by seeking to defeat the Bill. Those who oppose the Bill are saying that mass murder that took place 50 years ago should not be punished. I find that doctrine repugnant.

Mr. Rupert Allason: With his customary eye for meticulous detail, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) has put his finger on a couple of rather uncomfortable facts about the Bill.
If I may dare to correct my hon. Friend's history, I do not think that 5 June 1945 was VE day. We discussed this in Committee in some detail, and discovered that there were two possible options for that day. First, as everyone knows, it was the day when Brazil declared war on Japan. [Interruption.] We should not denigrate the Brazilians, who fought with great courage up Italy, and who sustained many casualties. The fifth of June was also the day of the tripartite meeting in Berlin, and that is what has been chosen.
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about the prospect of the Japanese being in this country. A large number of Japanese come to this country snow; there is a great deal of Japanese investment here, too. That leads to an awkward problem. My hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) described the possibility of a resident of the Federal Republic of Germany—in Committee he mentioned the war crime of gunning people down in the sea from a U-boat—who had committed an atrocity coming to the United Kingdom; he would be liable for prosecution under this Bill.
In Committee we discussed whether someone who stayed in this country overnight could qualify as a resident. The possibility is not so remote that a Japanese who had been involved in an atrocity 50 years before might come here. It would be very embarrassing if such a person—perhaps the director of a major Japanese concern who had escaped prosecution at the end of the war in Japan—was identified. It would be embarrassing if he were able to escape scot free although he had been positively identified—unlike someone who had committed an atrocity on German-occupied territory, who could be prosecuted.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: The person does not necessarily have to be Japanese. He could be, for instance, an Indian who had been a member of the Indian national army which operated under Japanese orders and also committed atrocities contrary to the laws of war.

Mr. Allason: I take that point. One of the interesting aspects about my hon. Friend's decision for a date in August is that it would encompass operations in the far east, which continued long after June 1945.
There has been a tendency, especially in Committee, to say that everyone committed war crimes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) suggested that British troops were involved in the murder of German prisoners of war. I should like to give him an opportunity to correct that statement, because I have carried out a little research and, as far as I am aware, the only case of an atrocity alleged by the German Government during the 1939–45 war was the alleged murder of a single German who was captured during a raid in 1942 in the Channel Islands. He was found dead by the Germans with his hands tied behind his back. As a direct consequence of that one incident, the prisoners who were captured at Dieppe in 1942 were all handcuffed and bound. That was the reason given for that episode.
As far as I am aware, no major or even minor atrocities were committed by British troops. It is easy for people to say that atrocities were committed by everybody and that in some way that is acceptable or forgivable. Allied troops


fought with great bravery because they knew that the rules of war were being followed by British and Allied Governments.

Sir Bernard Braine: I am listening to my hon. Friend with great attention because he is a meticulous recorder of events and many of us have read his works with pleasure. I entirely endorse what he says about the conduct of British troops during the war. That was my experience in Europe, Africa and the far east. He discussed the possibility, as others of our hon. Friends have done, of Japanese and Indians and others might come to this country who had been guilty of atrocious conduct during the war. Has he forgotten that the Bill deals with people who were nationals of another country when the crimes were committed and that the crimes would have been charged against Britons if they had committed them? The Bill deals with people who came to this country and acquired the privilege of British citizenship. That is the basis not only of the Bill but of the law in Canada, Australia and the United States when such people enter those countries and acquire citizenship. British citizenship is surely a great privilege, and not to be held by criminals.

Mr. Allason: I entirely accept my right hon. Friend's view that citizenship of the United Kingdom is a privilege. That is the nub of the retrospective aspect of the legislation. I would entirely endorse my right hon. Friend's observations if it were the case that the crimes and atrocities were committed by people who did not realise at the time that they were committing crimes. There is no question but that at the time these events were against not just British law but international law and conventions and the German military code. People were aware that they were committing crimes. We are merely ensuring that a loophole that was exploited by such people to find safe haven in this country through a strange quirk in the law that was overlooked by many people will be closed once and for all.
There is nothing retrospective about the legislation in terms of the crime. The only element of retrospection is in terms of the jurisdiction. My hon. Friends have made a good point about Japan and the victims of Japanese atrocities, but I urge them not to pursue it and risk wrecking the Bill.

Mr. Spencer Batiste: I strongly support the objectives and principles behind the Bill. Equally, I recognise that there is a great deal of force in what my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) said, which reflects the fact that the Bill is but one aspect of a wider principle. In times to come, we shall have to amend and extend the Bill. Unfortunately, the events of the second world war and the crimes against humanity were not unique in history. I wish that they had been; if they had, we might be taking a different view of the Bill. The sad truth is that crimes against humanity have been committed again and again, in different parts of the world.
Given the encouraging climate that is breaking out in eastern Europe and elsewhere, with democratic Governments taking over from oppressive regimes, there will be a constant stream of ex-murderers and ex-torturers on the run, looking for safe havens. I would find it extremely distasteful if, because of a loophole in the law, Britain became such a haven, be it for the Nazi war

criminal, the torturer from central America or the mass murderer from eastern Europe. The Bill is a valuable signpost for the way ahead, and it is desirable that we should enact the concept that, if anybody applies for British citizenship, he must be automatically deemed to give the British courts jurisdiction to try him for serious crimes that he may have committed elsewhere.
Although I have great sympathy for what my lion. Friend the Member for Tiverton said, I believe that the right amendment to the Bill would be far more wide-reaching, and would require careful and comprehensive thought. I am sure that, in due course, the House will have to return to it. The Bill is a welcome first step, but the amendment does not go far enough in dealing with a problem with which in time we will have to deal.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: I voted against the Bill on Second Reading because I believe it to be badly drafted and flawed. We should not introduce retrospective legislation. In Committee, my hon. Friends and I who opposed the Bill on Second Reading made it clear that we were trying to improve the Bill by tabling amendments. None of our amendments were selected, so we were not able to make the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) has made tonight. Had we done so—I tabled an amendment reasonably similar to his—we could have had this debate in Committee.
I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon. South (Mr. Marshall) that the amendment does not weak en the Bill. Rather, it strengthens it by making it applicable to all war criminals of the second world war, rather than to a small number. It would be wrong to introduce a law designed to deal with specific individuals—and only a small number of people will be caught by this Bill—when we know that, during the war, others committed similar horrific crimes in other countries. I am concerned that the Bill is so narrowly drawn. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton makes a good point in trying to extend it to cover all war criminals from the second world war who are not covered by existing legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) is mistaken about the circumstances since the second world war. The Bill deals with crimes committed in that war, because anyone who was involved in a crime committed since that time will be covered by existing legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) inadvertently referred to "allies", and I subsequently intervened in his speech. He then, having defined the term "allies" more carefully, spoke about those who were working with the Germans and referred to as being occupied by the Germans. Vichy France was not occupied by the Germans—that is why it was Vichy France. After the invasion of north Africa in Operation Torch on 10 November 1942, Vichy France was ruled by the French.
It is our understanding from what was said in Committee that actions of collaborators with the German regime in areas that were not under direct German occupation will not be caught by the Bill. Indeed, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) introduced an amendment that would have added "or under German control" after "German Occupation". We were promised in Committee by my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, Home Office that that proposal would be considered and raised again on Report. I look forward to hearing from my right hon. Friend what consideration has been


given by the Home Office to the sensible amendment that was tabled and moved by the Opposition spokesman in Committee.
It is surely sensible to recognise that those who committed crimes in Vichy France between June 1940 and 10 November 1942, although not under German occupation, were subject to a puppet government who were very much under German control. A similar argument can be extended to other countries, such as those in the Balkans, which were in a similar position. They were not ruled directly by the Germans but they were very much under German influence.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: Has my hon. Friend any evidence of war crimes committed by the Vichy French which are not triable by the French authorities and therefore not subject to extradition from Britain? Furthermore, has he any evidence that such persons are now resident in the United Kingdom?

Mr. Bennett: It is clear that my hon. Friend was not in his place when that argument was advanced a few minutes ago. It is because the Bill has been introduced as a direct result of the activities of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre that the only evidence that we have is that which has been uncovered. It does not make sense to say that we shall pass only laws that are particular. No other evidence has been produced, because no one has looked for it. The most sensible course would be to produce a Bill that had the benefit of covering all war crimes that are not presently covered by legislation. That is all that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton is seeking to do.

Mr. Allason: I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) was making the point that the French have their own legislation and that, if there are people resident in Britain who are of French origin, they can be extradited to France to stand trial there.

Mr. Bennett: I am not sure whether that is true. We are talking about people who have taken British citizenship, who are surely in a different position from that of French citizens. In those circumstances there may be far more difficulties in dealing with an offence that took place up to 1945, and subsequently when the law changed as a result of the Geneva convention. The Bill was introduced to deal with crimes for which, under the convention, we have no redress.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: My hon. Friend has shot his case.

Mr. John Marshall: Will my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) give way?

Mr. Bennett: No. I have given way on several occasions already.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) says that I have shot my case, but we do not know whether there are people from Japan and elsewhere around the world, including the Balkan countries, who might be caught if the amendment of my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton were accepted. I cannot understand my hon. Friend's objections to widening the Bill. To widen it would not let off any of the people whom they think the legislation should cover. Indeed, it might extend it to others. Surely that is a sensible proposition. I cannot understand why my hon. Friends want a narrow Bill to deal with one specific class of person. That is not good law. If the House is to legislate in this area, it should enact general laws that are applicable to everyone who committed war crimes during the period that we are considering.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: I support the amendment but I am not happy about the Bill. I am deeply unhappy about retrospective justice and about the difficulty of finding adequate evidence and bringing old men to trial. I have not been able to speak in previous debates on the Bill, but I voted against the measure on Second Reading for the reasons to which I have referred. If we are to have legislation, it must be even-handed.
Clause 3(6) makes it necessary to support the amendment, or something like it. The subsection states:
Her Majesty may by Order in Council direct that the provisions of this Act shall extend, with such exceptions and modifications as appear to Her Majesty to be appropriate, to the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands or any colony.
It so happens that one of our colonies is Hong Kong, which has been much in the news recently. It was the scene of some of the most appalling atrocities during the second world war. I find it difficult to accept that among the teeming millions of the population of Hong Kong there are not some Japanese war criminals.
We are being asked to pass a piece of legislation that is designed to catch half a dozen people who have been fingered by one man and one institute, and to bring them to trial. We shall have an Act that can, by Order in Council, be extended yet be unable to catch people who committed in Hong Kong some of the most appalling atrocities known to man. For that reason alone, if this House is to legislate—I have grave doubts about the wisdom of what the House has embarked upon and I am deeply unhappy about it—we must be even-handed.

11 pm

Mr. Alistair Darling: I understand why many right hon. and hon. Members have reservations about the Bill; I do, too. However, on balance, I have reached the conclusion that the Bill should proceed. It is obvious that since the Geneva Conventions Act 1957 the problem has been resolved to the extent that anyone accused of what we loosely call war crimes can be prosecuted, regardless of his nationality, or the place at which those war crimes took place, provided that he is subject to the jurisdiction of any of the legal systems of the United Kingdom.
We could have left matters there, but for one problem. During the past few years, and in particular after Chalmers and Hetherington prepared their report, it has become apparent that some people living in this country may have been guilty of what are called war crimes. That being so, I find it difficult to envisage how it could be right or, indeed, possible to avoid taking action. If there are people in this country accused of having committed what, by any view, are appalling crimes, it would be wrong to do nothing about it. That is what has swung my vote behind the Bill.
I understand the thrust behind the remarks of the hon. Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop). Many of these points were made in Committee. I am not as confident as the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) that there is absolutely no one, beyond reasonable doubt, living in this country who may have been guilty of atrocities in the Japanese theatre. If there is no evidence that such people are living in this country, it would be pointless to add that provision to the Bill. If we were to agree to the amendment, we would be duty bound to start some investigation to try to determine whether people in that category were living here. I do not think that that is possible and, for that reason, I am not tempted to follow the hon. Member for Tiverton in his argument.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Does the hon. Gentleman think that if one such person were found, we should then go through the whole procedure of enacting another Bill? That is the thrust of his argument. As we are legislating, what is wrong with covering that eventuality rather than legislating ad hominem, which is usually considered to be a disreputable legislative practice?

Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman knows that I would be inconsistent if I said that if we found someone in that category in this country we should do nothing about it. That would not be right. I have to tell him, reluctantly, that if it emerged that there were people living in this country who may have been guilty of war crimes in the war against Japan, there would be no alternative but to deal with them in the way that we are dealing with people accused of having committed war crimes in the German theatre of war.
To agree to the amendment would inevitably require investigations and other work being carried out to determine whether there were Japanese war criminals—

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Why not?

Mr. Darling: We have to draw a line somewhere. It is, perhaps, a rough and ready line, but if there is no evidence that there are such people I should be reluctant to

encourage the Government to incur the time, effort and expense of engaging in a search that might be completely fruitless.
I am one of those Members who have come reluctantly to support the Bill, simply because we are told by reliable sources that there are people living in this country who may—I put it no higher than that, and we should remember it in future debates—have been guilty of war crimes. For that reason I am prepared to support the Bill. There could be people in this country guilty of war crimes in other theatres of war, and we would have to extend the scope of the legislation beyond Japan to other countries. Suffice it to say that I understand why the hon. Gentleman advanced his amendment, but I do not agree with it.

Mr. Hind: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's point. but the principle could be extended. If we were asked by the Soviet Union or by republics within it to extradite people from the United Kingdom to stand trial in those countries for war crimes, we might not have enough confidence in their system of justice to provide a fair and proper trial. However, if Japan or another democratic country made the same request in respect of a person who had committed war crimes in their theatre of war, we would be dealing with a western-style democracy having standards of justice that we recognise. That is not the position in respect of the Soviet Union.

Mr. Darling: I do not want to go down the road of extradition, but the hon. Gentleman's general point is correct. It may be possible to deal with this by way of extradition, according to the circumstances.
I refer to another aspect that I intended to raise on Third Reading—and I may still do so, if we ever reach it. The hon. Member for Tiverton made a point with which I have some sympathy, and to which some of his hon. Friends alluded, relating to Germany and to countries under German occupation. In Committee, we tabled an amendment to extend the definition to include territories that had substantially been under German control. Vichy France was mentioned in the debate, and since then the all-party war crimes group has undertaken additional work and cited Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and other countries.
The Minister undertook to examine that point, and he may have something to say—although perhaps not as much as we would like. If the other place has an opportunity to examine that aspect, it may choose to give it special consideration. The extent of territories under German occupation or controlled by Germany may he a moot point. It would be extremely awkward—I put it no higher than that—if the defence in a war crimes trial was able to prove that although a crime had been committed it had not occurred on territory in Germany, under German occupation, or under German control—with the result that the accused person could not be convicted under the Bill.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: If the hon. Gentleman accepts my amendment, that problem will disappear, because the amendment removes the definition of location.

Mr. Darling: The hon. Gentleman's amendment goes further than I want. I would prefer a tightening up of the definition of territory within Germany, under German occupation, or under German control rather than have the


definition removed altogether. The problem relating to location arises in practically every murder trial, and it is a matter for the Crown to prove.
Even if no satisfactory solution can be found, at the end of the day the Crown will have to prove its own indictment. If it cannot do so, the accused will be acquitted. I see nothing wrong with that requirement, which is an essential feature of our legal system and one that has much to commend it.

The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): This has been an extremely interesting debate. I agree largely with what the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) has just said in his brief concluding remarks.
I must address my opening remarks to the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop), who has taken a close interest in the Bill. I recall my hon. Friend intervening in the speech by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary when we first debated the issue in December.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton has followed the proceedings of the Bill closely since then. Even though he opposes the principle of the Bill very strongly, my hon. Friend has sought to ensure that if the Bill is enacted it should be as equitable and as workable as possible—I am grateful to him for that—as has my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack). My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) also pursued that line firmly and effectively in Committee. He also disliked the Bill but sought to improve it, while engaging in some interesting historical dialectic.
I shall examine carefully the thinking that has led my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton to table the amendments. I think that they are unnecessary and I disagree with them for three reasons. First, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary said in December and on Second Reading, the Bill as it stands, as a matter of Government policy, deliberately reflects closely the recommendations contained in the Hetherington-Chalmers report. Those recommendations were framed carefully to ensure that they dealt with allegations that were made to the inquiry.
I naturally understand the view that if we are to legislate to make war crimes trials possible, the legislation should apply to all crimes, wherever they are committed. However and—I think that many hon. Members would support this view—the Government would be reluctant to extend the Bill beyond what was recommended after such careful thought by the war crimes inquiry. After all, it advertised widely and people from all over the country and from abroad made depositions to it and it built up a considerable expertise.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: It is for the House to legislate, not for Mr. Hetherington or Mr. Chalmers.

Mr. Patten: That is exactly what the House is doing and over the years my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton has been a notable defender of the House of Commons, of the Chamber of the House and of its rights.

Mr. Nicholas Benett: rose—

Mr. Patten: If I may, I shall continue my reply, and then I shall give way.
Nonetheless, the Government asked the Hetherington-Chalmers committee to look into the issues. It considered them objectively and made a set of recommendations which the Government accepted, which is why they formed the basis for the framework of the legislation. It is a short Bill—three clauses and one schedule—and it has been closely scrutinised in Committee.

Mr. Bennett: My hon. Friend has just shot a hole in his argument because the Government set up the Hetherington-Chalmers inquiry and the terms of reference were set out by the Government:
To obtain and examine relevant material, including material held by Government Departments and documents which have been or may be submitted by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre".
It goes on to describe war crimes, which extend
only to crimes of murder, manslaughter or genocide committed in Germany and in territories occupied by German forces during the Second World War.
My hon. Friend, the Minister prays in aid an argument that that was what the Hetherington-Chalmers report concentrated on, but the Government set up the terms of reference to consider that specific point alone.

Mr. Patten: I do not believe that I have shot a hole in my argument or any other part of my person. I am about to deal with the amendment moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton, which is what we are debating. We are not reopening the wider arguments, which I know you would not wish us to do, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because they were examined in Second Reading and exhaustively in committee. The amendment deals specifically with the extension of the legislation to deal with what one might—in shorthand—term the Japanese problem.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Patten: Before I turn to that, I shall give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) and then my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold).

Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if anyone in the United Kingdom had had one shred of evidence that a former Japanese war criminal was resident in the United Kingdom he would have produced that evidence at the time of the inquiry?

Mr. Patten: I agree with what my hon. Friend says, as I agree with what he said in his speech.

Mr. Jacques Arnold: Is my right hon. Friend confident that the term
Germany or under German occupation
is sufficiently wide? Concern was expressed in Committee about the probability of crimes having been committed in the Ukraine and elsewhere in Russia.

Mr. Patten: I shall deal with that point later.
The nub of the argument is that, despite all the publicity about the war crimes issue in the last few years there has been no suggestion that there are any alleged war criminals, other than those who committed their alleged crimes in German or German-controlled territory, living within the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom. That point was made forcefully by my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon, South, for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) and for Elmet (Mr. Batiste). We do not wish this country to be a


haven for any criminal, of whatever sort. We seek to legislate to deal with an identifiable mischief rather than with a hypothetical future event.
As the inquiry report shows—it was a careful inquiry the—arrival in this country in the years immediately following the second world war of some men and women who may have committed crimes in Germany or in German-occupied territory reflects the nature of the conditions in post-war Europe. Thousands and thousands of people in post-war Europe had been displaced from their former homes and were seeking new homes and work, sometimes in this country. The Bill deals with the possibility that some of the people who came to settle in this country from Germany or from countries that had been occupied by the Germans may have committed war crimes.
After the termination of hostilities in the Soviet Union, there was no mass migration from the Soviet Union to western Europe. Moreover, there is no evidence of any mass migration, or even mini-migration of people after the cessation of hostilities in the far east that led to people from Japan settling in this country.

Mr. Cormack: My right hon. Friend must admit that it is not fanciful to say that migration from Hong Kong is a possibility. As there is a provision to extend the legislation to include the colonies, and as Hong Kong is by far our largest and most important colony, why does my right hon. Friend set his face against that possibility?

Mr. Patten: Because we take the view—I personally do so—that we should seek to legislate to deal with identifiable mischiefs rather than with mischiefs that may arise at some future date. That is narrowly what we are seeking to do in the Bill.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: The argument is about identifiable mischiefs, not about identifiable persons. My amendment covers the mischief. To try to constrain it constrains it to persons rather than to the whole mischief.

Mr. Patten: The identifiable mischief is the fact that people who are now living within this jurisdiction may have committed murder or may have attempted murder in Germany or in German-occupied territory. In no sense at all does the legislation refer ad hominem to any persons named. The mischief is that some persons—all persons have names—may in the past have committed such alleged crimes.
I now turn to the important point about territory raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central and reflected in the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Torbay (Mr. Allason) and for Pembroke. We have a pretty clear view about what is German and German-occupied territory. My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke asked about Vichy France. Actions by Vichy France against Frenchmen would not he war crimes, and would therefore be outside the scope of international law at the time; they would be acts of homicide or crimes against humanity. Actions by puppet regimes against their own citizens in their own territory would fall outside the definition of war crime at any stage since the Hague convention of 1907. They would not be war crimes by that or by any other definition in international law, as far as I am aware, although they might certainly be caught under a number of crimes against humanity.

Sir John Stokes: The French connection is a difficult issue. I was involved with the French for quite a long time. I fought the Vichy French and very nearly fought the free French. After the 1941 invasion of Vichy Syria, many British officers and soldiers were taken back to France where they were treated quite abominably for several weeks and under the armistice it was very hard to get them back. That will not be helped by the Bill.

Mr. Patten: I do not believe that that will be covered by the legislation. I should be happy to learn more about those matters from my hon. Friend. I should be particularly interested to learn how he narrowly avoided fighting the free French. Perhaps at some stage my hon. Friend will tell me how that happy chance came about.
I must deal with the point raised by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central reflecting some correspondence sent to me by the former Home Secretary the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South (Mr. Rees) about the terms in which the Bill is drafted and whether they are adequate to catch war crimes in what might have been termed puppet regimes or the territories of puppet regimes sympathetic to the German cause. The matter was raised in Committee and I have reflected on it since. Since then we have benefited from the advice of the right hon. Member for Morley and Leeds, South and some very detailed papers which I received towards the end of last week. I am studying them carefully, and if we conclude that as a result there is indeed a gap such as that alluded to by my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke, we shall certainly be willing to table the necessary amendments to be debated in Committee in another place.
However, it is fair and important for me to repeat that, as with Vichy France, my preliminary assessment is to doubt whether the events described in the papers that the right hon. Gentleman was good enough to send me fall within the definition of a war crime. The events described were undoubtedly terrible, but given the circumstances in which they took place, it appears that they might have been crimes against humanity rather than war crimes and would therefore lie outside the scope of the Bill, whatever territorial extent is applied.
The third point that I put before my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton, who I know feels very strongly about the Japanese issue, is that it is obvious that we can give our courts the power to try only cases involving people who live within our jurisdiction. The Bill does not provide the power to try alleged war criminals, whatever offences they may have committed, if they have not come to live here.
Supposing that, on behalf of the Government, I accepted my hon. Friend's amendment and we could extend the scope of the Bill to Japan, Russia and elsewhere, I fear that we would be conveying a misleading signal to a number of people whose fathers, husbands or relations might have suffered terribly at the hands of the Japanese during the war. It might lead people to think that something could be done when, as far as I know, there has never been an allegation that anyone living within British jurisdiction might have committed such crimes. It would therefore be a mistake for the House to raise people's hopes that something might be done to right past terrible deeds when it was not in our power so to do.

Mr. Alan Willians: The Minister's point would be more valid if the proposition struck at a specific date, such as March 1990, as in the Bill. The Bill, however, goes on to use the words "or subsequently". I understand from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Worley, West (Mr. Archer) that "or subsequently" refers to the future as well as the present. Evidence of what happened in the past is not conclusive in regard to the jurisdiction; the Bill allows for what could happen in the future.

Mr. Patten: The Bill refers to whether a person is resident in this country from that date.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: My hon. Friend asked what comfort the extension would bring if there were no Japanese war criminals now living in Britain, the Channel islands, the Isle of Man or a British colony. Obviously thousands of Japanese war criminals are still alive. The comfort that such an extension would bring is this: people who had lost fathers or husbands would know that those responsible would not dare to come to this country. If the amendment is not passed, however, they will be able to come here with impunity.

Mr. Patten: There has never been any evidence that anyone alleged to be guilty of such crimes has ever come to this country. I feel that the amendment would provide scant help for those who grieve for the people who were so badly harmed during the Japanese conflict, although I appreciate that my hon. Friend would like to enable such mischief to be blocked in the future. I do not think that it is right in principle for us to legislate in that way, and I hope that, having heard my three reasons for not wishing to accept the amendment, my hon. Friend will feel inclined to withdraw it.

Question put, That the amendment be made:—

The House divided: Ayes 22, Noes 151.

Division No. 180]
[11.26 pm


AYES


Allason, Rupert
Skinner, Dennis


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Stanbrook, Ivor


Beith, A. J.
Stokes, Sir John


Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)
Summerson, Hugo


Buck, Sir Antony
Taylor, Matthew (Truro)


Butcher, John
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Wallace, James


Cormack, Patrick
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


Glyn, Dr Sir Alan
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)



Hughes, Simon (Southwark)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Kennedy, Charles
Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop and Mr. Nicholas Winterton.


Mans, Keith





NOES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Boswell, Tim


Amess, David
Bradley, Keith


Arbuthnot, James
Brandon-Bravo, Martin


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Bright, Graham


Armstrong, Hilary
Brooke, Rt Hon Peter


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)


Ashby, David
Burns, Simon


Atkins, Robert
Burt, Alistair


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Butterfill, John


Baldry, Tony
Caborn, Richard


Batiste, Spencer
Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)


Battle, John
Carrington, Matthew


Beggs, Roy
Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda


Bendall, Vivian
Chope, Christopher


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Conway, Derek


Bermingham, Gerald
Cook, Robin (Livingston)


Boateng, Paul
Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)





Cryer, Bob
Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)


Currie, Mrs Edwina
Montgomery, Sir Fergus


Dalyell, Tam
Moonie, Dr Lewis


Darling, Alistair
Morley, Elliot


Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Dixon, Don
Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)


Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James
Moynihan, Hon Colin


Dunnachie, Jimmy
Neubert, Michael


Durant, Tony
Nicholls, Patrick


Eggar, Tim
Nicholson, David (Taunton)


Evans, John (St Helens N)
Norris, Steve


Fallon, Michael
Oppenheim, Phillip


Fearn, Ronald
Paice, James


Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)
Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil


Foot, Rt Hon Michael
Patchett, Terry


Foster, Derek
Patten, Rt Hon John


Freeman, Roger
Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Pike, Peter L.


Golding, Mrs Llin
Portillo, Michael


Gordon, Mildred
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


Graham, Thomas
Prescott, John


Hanley, Jeremy
Redwood, John


Hardy, Peter
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Harris, David
Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas


Haynes, Frank
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Hind, Kenneth
Roe, Mrs Marion


Hood, Jimmy
Rogers, Allan


Howard, Rt Hon Michael
Ross, William (Londonderry E)


Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)
Rowlands, Ted


Hunt, David (Wirral W)
Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas


Illsley, Eric
Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)


Jack, Michael
Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)


Janner, Greville
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


Jessel, Toby
Steen, Anthony


Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)
Steinberg, Gerry


Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Stevens, Lewis


Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Kilfedder, James
Sumberg, David


King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Kirkhope, Timothy
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Lang, Ian
Thorne, Neil


Lawrence, Ivan
Trippier, David


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Vaz, Keith


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Walker, Bill (T'side North)


Livingstone, Ken
Waller, Gary


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Walley, Joan


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Wareing, Robert N.


Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas
Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)


McAvoy, Thomas
Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)


MacGregor, Rt Hon John
Wheeler, Sir John


McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)
Widdecombe, Ann


MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)
Wilson, Brian


Maclean, David
Winnick, David


Maclennan, Robert
Wood, Timothy


McLoughlin, Patrick
Yeo, Tim


Mahon, Mrs Alice



Maples, John
Tellers for the Noes:


Marshall, John (Hendon S)
Mr. Sydney Chapman and Mr. Irvine Patnick.


Mawhinney, Dr Brian



Meale, Alan

Question accordingly negatived.

Order for Third Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. John Patten.]

Mr. Darling: I made my position on the Bill clear in the debate on amendment No. 2, and I see no point in repeating it. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am equally confident in saying that I shall have the support of the majority of the House in following that approach. I dealt with jurisdiction and the definition of Germany and of territory occupied by Germany. I hope that the Government will give further thought to tabling amendments in Committee in the other place. I know that


the Minister will accept my point in the spirit in which it is made when I say that I remain unconvinced by his preliminary reasoning. He will have to return to this matter.
I am not sure whether we can resolve a further difficulty, which is how on earth we can define the laws and customs of war. They are defined in the 1907 Hague convention and, as one can see from the Hetherington and Chalmers report, the definition is fraught with difficulties. I am content to leave this issue to the Crown, which will have to prove that a killing was such as to render it contrary to the laws and customs of war. Perhaps those in the other place with greater experience and expertise will turn their minds to that difficulty.
This must be one of the few Bills on which it is necessary for a Committee to report to the House that it has been unable to resolve many problems. First, many of the fears that we canvassed in Committee may not arise in any trial, and, secondly, they will be a matter for proof at the trial. If the Crown cannot prove the indictment against any individual, that individual must be acquitted. That seems to be the right solution.
No one should be under any illusion that the prosecution of these cases will be easy, especially given the lapse of time since the events took place. Despite those difficulties, as I said when I spoke on the amendments, I believe that the Bill should proceed. Although it is far from perfect and can never be perfect because of the circumstances in which we have to legislate, it is not so flawed that it is unworkable. Therefore, the House should support it.
The Government have taken one welcome step. In Committee, the Opposition moved an amendment to require the Secretary of State to submit an annual report on the progress of the trials, in general rather than specific terms. It would address the problem raised in Committee of an end date for the trials. The Minister of State, Home Office, the right hon. Member for Oxford, West and Abingdon (Mr. Patten), has been good enough to write to me to say that, although he could not accept our amendment, he accepted the principle that an annual report in general terms should be made available to both Houses and, indeed, to any other interested party. It would report on general progress as well as on the costs incurred.
The explanatory memorandum of the Bill anticipates spending of between £7 million and £9 million in England and Wales and £3·5 million in Scotland. That is a great deal of money and it would be wrong for Parliament to allow the trials to run on without any supervision. As this is a special Bill which deals with a special case, the Minister's solution is welcome. I dare say that he will refer to it again when he replies.
I feel strongly about pre-trial publicity. I know that there was not exactly a meeting of minds on this subject in Committee. If someone in Scotland is accused of committing a war crime, from the moment that he is charged there is almost a total ban on any publicity about events that will be the subject of the trial. Furthermore, during the trial there are strict restrictions on what can be reported. There cannot be speculation about events that are not canvassed in the trial. The position in England is different. Pre-trial publicity is allowed. As we have seen in the past, publicity during the trial is also apparently allowed. I am worried that there will be trial by television or by the media. If that happened, it would be a travesty of justice.
We cannot afford another Guildford, Birmingham or Broadwater Farm where there is controversy about the circumstances surrounding the trial. If people are to be brought to trial under the Bill, they must be tried before a jury who will hear the facts in the sober silence of the court room. They should not be subject to the influence of newspapers or television. They should not be influenced by consideration of events that took place at the same time but may have had nothing to do with the individual facing trial. I feel strongly that the Government should have done something about pre-trial publicity in this case, just as they will have to tackle the matter generally in the English criminal system.
To show that I am not partisan, let me say that I have a great deal of sympathy with the English system on dock identification. In Scotland we have a problem, in that the witness is invited to identify an accused person in court. There is usually only one person chained up between two policemen, his head hung in shame. If the witness could not identify him or her, it would be very odd. I have been invited to refer to an anecdote that I related in Committee. It would be wrong of me to do so because the hon. Gentleman concerned is not in the Chamber.
We received assurances about legal aid in Committee. They are extremely important. Legal aid must not be a barrier in these cases. Much concern has been and, I expect, will be expressed in another place about retrospection. We should remember that we are not creating a new crime, although I accept that we are extending jurisdiction, and that involves retrospection.
I accept the difficulties of passage of time and proof and the problems that the defence will face. But, on balance, I believe that it would be wrong of the House not to pass this legislation. Such serious allegations have been made that it would be wrong for us to turn our backs on them and ignore them. Therefore, I urge hon. Members to give the Bill a Third Reading.

Mr. Stanbrook: I have been against the principle of the Bill ever since the request for legislation was made by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in London two or three years ago. I have followed the issue closely ever since, and have been on the Standing Committee considering the Bill. I have no reason to change my view that it is a bad Bill.
It is bad for two main reasons. First, in principle it is wrong to enact retrospective legislation to cover something that happened 50 years ago, 1,000 or more miles away. That cannot be good or in the public interest. It cannot be right for the atrocities and awful events that took place in the last war to be re-enacted and exhumed, to be once again paraded before the people of this country and their children, when the need is for peace, reconciliation and forgiveness. No good will come of the trials that may take place as a result of the legislation.
Secondly, I oppose the Bill because, in practice—quite apart from the principle—it will be impossible to ensure that the people concerned receive a fair trial. In Standing Committee, some of my hon. Friends and I endeavoured to improve the Bill to try to ensure that those who were likely to be defendants were given assurances and the privilege of a fair trial. We were unsuccessful, and the rest of the Committee disagreed with us.
The Bill should not be called a War Crimes Bill. If we know anything of the allegations and evidence, we know


that these are not war crimes in the proper, even legal, sense of the word. We are talking about murder and the massacre of innocent civilians. It so happens that those events occurred during the war. We are talking about the events and people covered by the Bill. It so happens that the events occurred in Europe, in German-occupied territory. That does not make them war crimes. By any standard, those events, whether or not they occurred during the war, would have constituted murder.
Speaking as a lawyer, may I say that those who devised the Bill made a great mistake in closely defining the offences as crimes committed against the laws and customs of war. When one gets into the nitty-gritty of the laws and customs of war, one gets bogged down—as we did in Standing Committee—over how that phrase is defined. The Hague convention of 1907 specifies what constitutes war crimes. Lo and behold, they do not cover events such as the murder of civilians and innocent people; by and large, they cover the rights of soldiers. In 1907, before the first world war, there was still a chivalrous notion that the rights of soldiers, especially prisoners of war, had to be protected.

Mr. John Marshall: My hon. Friend said that we were dealing with murder. As he knows, there is no statute of limitations on murders in the United Kingdom, so why is he recommending one for these murders?

Mr. Stanbrook: If only my hon. Friend would listen more carefully, he would find a little more merit in my argument, which has nothing to do with his point.
By describing these outrages as war crimes, we misdescribe them. They were horrific crimes, but they are not to be confined within the definition of war crimes, or to be further narrowed down in this Bill in terms of territorial extent or of acts contrary to the laws and customs of war. All such terms are inappropriate.
If suitable jurisdiction had been in force at the time, it would surely have covered these crimes without the need to refer to them as war crimes; normal criminal legislation should have covered them. That is the brunt of the arguments advanced earlier—that the jurisdiction of the courts should be extended to include all such crimes, wherever and by whomsoever they are committed. The Government have missed this opportunity to propose that our laws should in future cover all such offences. If they had taken it, it would have constituted a passport to future co-operation in matters of extradition. It would also have avoided the overtones and the narrowing of definitions involved in the description "war crimes". If this legislation designates such crimes as war crimes, that will only make the application of the law more difficult in future.
In his wisdom, Mr. Speaker chose not to select for debate the two new clauses to the Bill that I tabled. No doubt he thought I would have the chance to raise the two issues concerned on Third Reading, and I gladly do so now. Nowhere in the Bill is any provision made to enable the defendants to gather evidence on their own behalf. It is a fundamental right of anyone in this country charged with an offence to be able to gather his own evidence and to seek witnesses in his defence to show that he is not guilty of the crime with which he has been charged. In most cases, this right is taken for granted and is available.
In the natural course of events, a trial will not come on until such an opportunity has been given, but in any case that may arise out of this legislation, the offences having occurred 1,000 or more miles away almost 50 years ago, the defence will face grave difficulties in securing the evidence with which to rebut the charges. The Bill does nothing to help the defence in this respect, which makes it vulnerable to criticism on that ground alone. It is not nearly enough to state that the usual laws of criminal procedure will apply. That will result in all too short a time being allowed, once a defendant has been arrested and charged, before a case comes on for trial.
The chance of a successful application to the trial judge to enable the defence to go to Russia or Israel or to any of the other places to which the Hetherington-Chalmers inquiry travelled, spending £500,000 and 18 months, will not be available once cases have been initiated in this country.

Mr. Allason: Does my hon. Friend agree that this matter was fully covered in Committee and that the Government gave an undertaking about legal aid?

Mr. Stanbrook: We are not talking about pure financing, although I would be glad to hear that the Government have allowed £500,000 from the legal aid fund and 18 months for any defendant seeking to establish evidence in his own cause. If that is what is meant, I welcome it because it will go some way towards balancing matters between the prosecution and the defence.
In normal cases before criminal courts in Britain, the charge involves events that took place fairly recently. Some 90 per cent. of such cases are about events that happened a matter of days before the arrest. Here we are dealing with events that took place 50 years ago, and 49 years ago in one case that I know. After such a passage of time, is it right that there should be no provision for the defence to be able to say when the case comes before the trial judge that it is impossible for justice to be done?
Let us suppose that the defence said, "We have not been able to gather evidence. We have not been allowed to travel unhindered in Russia. We have not discovered anything that could be of value to us and therefore choose not to offer any sort of evidence." Would the prosecution, the Government and all the people who are prosecuting and persecuting these people be content with the result of such a case? Of course they would not, yet that is the nub of the problem with which we are dealing.
Fifty years make a tremendous difference to the quality of evidence that is available in a case. It is no use people telling me, as they often do during our debates, that the people concerned were not British at the time. That makes not the slightest difference. These events occurred nearly 50 years ago and many miles away. The alleged offences were committed under conditions in which it was impossible for evidence to be gathered. Since then, governmental institutions and well-founded bodies such as the Simon Wiesenthal Centre have campaigned and spent money all over the world in order to produce evidence that might justify the prosecution of these people, and certainly enough to justify our Government initiating legislation to permit that to happen even though it will be ex post facto a retrospective law.
There is a grave danger that prosecutions under this legislation will be oppressive and vindictive and perceived to be inspired by motives of revenge, malice and hatred.


The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) spoke about the pre-trial publicity, all of it aimed against these people who are already identified by the media and by members of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, one of whom has been marching up and down outside the house of one of the prospective defendants with a banner proclaiming his guilt.
Even in Scotland, where apparently the standards in such matters are somewhat higher than they are in England, what chance have these people of a fair trial? What chance do they have of the application of the normal standards of British justice that would apply to anybody else were it not for the fact that we are passing special retroactive legislation to cover these people? It is nonsense to say that 70 people are involved. There may be a list of names, but the inquiry claimed that there are only three people about whom there is sufficient evidence to justify prosecution. That claim is based on an assumption that the House will change the law—bend it—to make it possible to proceed against them in accordance with the laws of evidence.
It will be impossible for such people to have a fair trial. It will be impossible to stop pre-trial publicity. From the moment that they are identified by name, as they will be shortly, they will be picked out by the legislation as guilty men. Already they are accused of being Nazi war criminals. We are legislating for an injustice. We are deliberately picking on three people.
Despite the fact that, for 40 years or so, they have lived here, apparently honestly and peacefully, as useful citizens, and that the law did not cover the crimes that they are alleged to have committed, we shall finger them and rig the law so that they become guilty. I should not be surprised if, at the end of it all, after the expenditure of millions of pounds and lots of time, a good British jury said, "We are having nothing to do with this," and the whole thing would be aborted. I hope so, but one cannot depend on it. British juries are often unreliable—I speak as a practising barrister—and I do not want to hide the inherent possibilities.
It would be wrong for the House to authorise legislation such as this deliberately directed against three named and identified people. I should always be opposed to such a move.

Sir John Stokes: I am glad to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrooke). Although the events about which we are talking took place nearly 50 years ago, I have some recollection of those times and the unpleasant scenes that I saw.
This is the third occasion on which we have debated this subject. I listened to the two previous debates and followed the excellent debate in the other place, and have listened carefully to what has been said today. All my instincts as an Englishman continue to be against our proceeding any further with this Bill. It contains new and thoroughly unsatisfactory retrospective legislation. It goes against the grain of our history, how we do things and how we introduce our laws. There remain severe practical problems in attempting to give a fair trial to people accused of alleged crimes committed so long ago. There is also the almost impossible problem of physically

identifying the supposed criminals. There is no public demand for the Bill. I have not received a single letter about it from my constituents.
I dread what will happen if the Bill is passed. We know that long, thorough and expensive inquiries will have to be made. We shall have to rely on testimony from Soviet Russia that is bound to be highly unreliable. We are instituting special forms of trial and production of witnesses will be called for. The defendants are bound to be at a grievous disadvantage, and I shudder to think what the gutter press will make of it. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) spoke of the extremes that there will be in the press, television and the radio, and how these wretched men will be condemned from the word go. People will be found guilty long before the trial, an intolerable strain will be placed on juries, and the trials will be in danger of becoming show trials—all quite unEnglish and foreign.
Above all, the entire procedure is partial. Many of the crimes committed by the Japanese, for instance, are not covered by the Bill. At a time when our legislative process is overloaded and when the Government should be—I hope that they will be—concentrating on good government and good administration, this is an entirely unnecessary and dangerous Bill. If it is enacted—I hope that it will not—I am sure that in time it will be deeply regretted by the Government and all those concerned with it.

Mr. Michael Irvine: I feel the most profound unease about the passage of the Bill on two principal grounds. First, this is retrospective legislation. Let us have no soft soaping or weasel words about that. It is definitely retrospective legislation. The dreadful deeds to which it is directed were not triable in the British courts in the year after they were committed, and they are not so triable now. The Bill is needed to make them triable.

Mr. John Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that if any person who was a British citizen at the time the offences were committed had committed them, he could have been tried under the law of this country?

Mr. Irvine: Yes. He could have been tried under our law. He still could be so tried. Retrospective legislation would not be needed. The fact remains, however, that to deal with the deeds in question and to bring the individuals who were identified by the Hetherington-Chalmers report to trial, the Bill is necessary. If it is not enacted, those people could not be tried in the courts of Great Britain. It is without doubt retrospective legislation. What is more, it is retrospective criminal legislation.
I have an intense and instinctive dislike for retrospective legislation of any sort. In the hands of an oppressive or unscrupulous Government, it is so easy for retrospective legislation to be used to challenge liberty and justice. The danger is that a Bill such as this will be used in the future as a precedent. That is a great peril and one that the House should consider carefully before giving the Bill a Third Reading.

Mr. James Wallace: Will the hon. Gentleman inform the House how many clauses of Finance Bills that have involved retrospective legislation he has supported since becoming a Member of this place?

Mr. Irvine: Perhaps not surprisingly, I cannot give a precise answer to that question. I merely say that in principle I am very much opposed to retrospective civil legislation. It is true that that is to be found especially in taxation measures. But if retrospective legislation relating to civil matters is dangerous—I believe strongly that it is—retrospective legislation that deals with criminal matters is doubly—indeed, trebly—dangerous.

Mr. Ivan Lawrence: Would my hon. Friend say that it was ever all right, ever lawful, to commit mass murder? If it was never right or lawful, what is wrong with retrospective legislation which has the effect of bringing to book those who committed those crimes?

Mr. Irvine: Of course it is never right to commit mass murder. I am horrified that my hon. and learned Friend should think fit to pose that question to me. It is important that I make it clear that nothing that is said in the Chamber can possibly overshadow the fact that the most terrible crimes were committed in central and eastern Europe during the second world war. The most terrible suffering was endured by those who were subjected to those ghastly cruelties. Nothing that I or anyone else says in the Chamber should minimise that. I assure hon. Members who take a different view from me about the merits of the Bill that I share equally their horror at those crimes and deeds. However, the fact remains that this is retrospective criminal legislation, which poses a great danger.
I draw the attention of the House to the words of Lord Reid in the case of Waddington—a not unfamiliar name in this House—v. Miah—1974, 1 Weekly Law Reports, page 683. Lord Reid was, for many years, a distinguished Member of this House. Later he sat as a lord of appeal in ordinary and became one of the most distinguished judges of this century. He said:
There has for a very long time been a strong feeling against making legislation, and particularly criminal legislation, retrospective … It is hardly credible that any government department would promote or that Parliament would pass retrospective criminal legislation.
Yet only 16 years later this Bill is being guided through the House by a Minister. It was given a massive majority on its Second Reading even though it involves retrospective criminal legislation.
It is not just the fact that this Bill is retrospective criminal legislation that leads me to feel great unease about it.

Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop: Can my hon. Friend help me and other hon. Members by telling us whether Lord Reid was referring to the creation of new offences or to the extending of jurisdiction where neither had previously existed?

Mr. Irvine: With great respect to my hon. Friend, Lord Reid was enunciating general principles. Soft soaping will not get the House or my hon. Friend anywhere. The fact is that whether it relates to jurisdiction, territory or citizenship, legislation of this kind represents retrospective criminal legislation.
The second reason for my considerable unease about the Bill is my belief that it will be impossible, at this distance of time, for there to be a fair trial in any contested prosecutions brought under the Bill. The time that has passed since the deeds in question is immense. The further that those deeds pass into time, the more difficult it will be for justice to be done.
I draw the attention of the House to a passage from a judgment by Lord Justice Diplock in the case of Allen v. Sir Alfred McAlpine and Sons Ltd. (1968) 2 Queen's Bench page 229 which I read out in Committee. It was a case in which the Court of Appeal was deciding whether three civil actions should be dismissed for want of prosecution. One action involved an accident nine years previously, another a different accident that had occurred nine years previously, and the third matters that had arisen 14 years previously.
I ask the House to consider Lord Justice Diplock's words at page 255 particularly carefully:
Where the case is one in which at the trial disputed facts will have to be ascertained from oral testimony of witnesses recounting what they then recall of events which happened in the past, memories grow dim, witnesses may die or disappear. The chances of the courts being able to find out what really happened are progressively reduced as time goes on. This puts justice to the hazard. If the trial is allowed to proceed, this is more likely to operate to the prejudice of the plaintiff on whom the onus of satisfying the court as to what happened generally lies. But there may come a time when the interval between the events alleged to constitute the cause of action and the trial of the action is so prolonged that there is a substantial risk that a fair trial of the issues will be no longer possible. When this stage has been reached, the public interest in the administration of justice demands that the action should not be allowed to proceed.
His words related to matters that had taken place not 45 or 48 years previously but only nine to 14 years previously.

Mr. David Sumberg: Does my hon. Friend recall that very recently an action was brought in the High Court by my noble Friend Lord Aldington relating to events that occurred not 10 or 20 years ago but 40 years ago, just after the second world war? The result was one of the largest libel awards in the history of this country, of more than £1 million. How does my hon. Friend square the success of that action with the quote that he has just given and the views that he advances?

Mr. Irvine: I have no difficulty in squaring that action with the points I make and the passage I quoted from Lord Justice Diplock's remarks. The case to which my hon. Friend refers did not require retrospective legislation. Nor was it a criminal action. In the particular circumstances of that case, the jury may have been able to determine the facts and reach a proper decision, but the longer the time that elapses from the commission of the offence, the more difficult it is to have a fair trial. That is particularly so in war crime cases because of the difficulty of preparing and presenting evidence.
At chapter nine, pargraph 44 of the Hetherington-Chalmers report, the difficulty confronting the prosecution in such cases is detailed. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) referred to the difficulties that the prosecution would face. What was not mentioned in the Hetherington-Chalmers report or in the speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central is the difficulties facing the defence. The desirability of ensuring a fair and proper trial should be at the heart of our considerations.
If it is difficult for the prosecution to bring a satisfactory case, it will be that much more difficult for the defence to refute it. After all, Hetherington and Chalmers employed a team of former Metropolitan police detectives working to amass evidence, and they enjoyed the co-operation of the Soviet authorities. The Soviet authorities may be very willing to grant facilities to the prosecution in a war crimes case, but would they necessarily be so ready to do so to


assist the defence? Although people living behind what used to be called the iron curtain may volunteer to give evidence for the prosecution, it might be different if they are called upon to give evidence for the defendant.
There is no doubt in my mind that, just as the prosecution will have difficulty, so will the defence, and the difficulties of the defence are likely to be greater. Some of the difficulties that face the prosecution have been made easier by what I regard as the wrongful denial of committal proceedings which are normally available in England to the defence. Anyone who has practised in the criminal courts knows how useful committal proceedings can be to the defendant's lawyers and how they enable the defendant to test the evidence for the prosecution case and to tie down the prosecution witnesses. Yet the defendant's right to committal proceedings is specifically set aside by the schedule to the Bill.
I fear that the defence will find it difficult to prepare its case properly. The question of legal aid is linked with that. My hon. Friend the Minister has said that the legal aid authorities will exercise their discretion generously, but there will be difficulties. Obviously, it would be absurd to allow the Legal Aid Board to grant financial assistance unconditionally to the defendants to enable them to follow up every avenue, but conducting the defence may be a massively expensive exercise, involving a great deal of travel abroad, and the use of interpreters, translators and experts to examine documents. It is important that, if the Bill is enacted, the legal aid authorities are allowed to be generous to ensure that as fair a trial as possible is achieved.
Those are the reasons behind my considerable anxiety and doubts about the Bill. It is a bad Bill. I hope that it runs into trouble in the other place and I hope also that the British jury—in which I have more faith than my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington—will bear in mind the risks involved in trials of this nature at this distance in time.

Mr. Nicholas Bennett: I am not a lawyer like my hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook) and for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine), but I recognise certain legal precepts that the Bill does not match up to. The first precept—the danger of retrospective legislation—has been ably dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich and I do not wish to comment further on it. The second is the question of equity. It is inequitable that we should bring forward a Bill which deals with a small, clearly identified group.
My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) has already drawn attention, in an amendment that was unsuccessful, to the unfairness of producing a law which limits by location the people caught within its ambit.
Let us consider the Baltic states and Poland, which were occupied by both the Russians and the Germans during the last war. The massacre at Katyn, which, until 12 April 1990, when the Russians came clean and admitted their responsibility, would have been within the ambit of the Bill. It is removed from the ambit of the Bill by the Russian statement of 12 April this year. The same is true of other atrocities during that period.
One only has to look at the Hetherington-Chalmers report to see the number of people who were killed by the

Russians in the Baltic states. Those crimes will not be covered by the Bill. It is repugnant to me that some people will be caught by the provisions of the Bill for crimes committed in the Baltic states while other people, who committed exactly the same kind of crimes a few months later or a few months earlier will be excluded because the Bill refers only to Germany or German-occupied territory.
When an alleged crime was committed nearly 50 years ago, it must be right that, if the defendant is to have a fair trial, he should have access to all the evidence. Defendants, however, will be unable to get the kind of help over the evidence that they need.
Since Parliament has spent so much time and money on discussing the issue, I cannot believe that juries will not be influenced by the fact that Parliament had to pass a special law to bring these people to trial. At the back of their minds there will constantly be the thought that these people must be guilty because Parliament went to all this trouble to bring them to trial. That cannot be right.
I hope that when the other place considers the Bill it will bear in mind the questions of justice, equity and fair trial. Their Lordships ought to remind themselves of their powerful debate that was held in the other place last December when Law Lord after Law Lord and ex-Lord Chancellor after ex-Lord Chancellor rammed home the fact that the Bill is deficient in terms of equity and fair trial. I hope that it will be defeated in another place, or so changed that this expensive, time-wasting and totally unnecessary Bill is rendered useless.

Mr. John Patten: To respond immediately to the request by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), I confirm that, on behalf of the Government, I am happy to undertake to arrange for the publication of an annual report on the working of the Bill. I promised during our consideration of the Bill in Committee to consider the matter. On reflection, I believe that the hon. Gentleman's suggestion was correct.
The contents of the report will have to be sufficiently general to ensure that individuals cannot be identified. Subject to that proviso, we should be able to provide an informative text that will be of interest both to right hon. and hon. Members and to the general public. The Government will place copies of the annual report in the Libraries of both Houses. They will also make copies available to the press through the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office in the normal way.
I listened carefully to the speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Orpington (Mr. Stanbrook), for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Sir J. Stokes), for Ipswich (Mr. Irvine) and for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett). Alas, I cannot agree with the points that they made so forcefully. I respect their point of view, so I am sad that I have to disagree with them. I shall not go into the reasons for that disagreement. I fear that I laboured those reasons in Committee and on Second Reading. All I would add is that the Bill was carefully scrutinised in Committee over a substantial number of hours.
Anyone who cares to read the reports of our Standing Committee proceedings will see that the Bill was scrutinised line by line and that it goes to another place having been properly scrutinised. It also goes to another place having been subject to overwhelming majorities on two occasions: when the report was debated in the House


on 12 December 1989 and after the Second Reading debate. I am sure that the Bill in its present form will be carefully and properly scrutinised in another place. It is to that other place that I hope the Bill will speedily go, after having obtained its Third Reading. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—

The House divided: Ayes 135, Noes 10.

Division No. 181]
[12.29 am


AYES


Abbott, Ms Diane
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Allason, Rupert
Dalyell, Tam


Amess, David
Darling, Alistair


Arbuthnot, James
Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Dixon, Don


Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James


Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)
Dunnachie, Jimmy


Baldry, Tony
Durant, Tony


Batiste, Spencer
Eggar, Tim


Beggs, Roy
Evans, John (St Helens N)


Beith, A. J.
Fallon, Michael


Bendall, Vivian
Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)


Benn, Rt Hon Tony
Foot, Rt Hon Michael


Bermingham, Gerald
Forman, Nigel


Boateng, Paul
Foster, Derek


Boswell, Tim
Freeman, Roger


Bradley, Keith
Garel-Jones, Tristan


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Glyn, Dr Sir Alan


Bright, Graham
Golding, Mrs Llin


Brooke, Rt Hon Peter
Gordon, Mildred


Brown, Michael (Brigg &amp; Cl't's)
Graham, Thomas


Burns, Simon
Hanley, Jeremy


Burt, Alistair
Harris, David


Butterfill, John
Haynes, Frank


Carl Me, Alex (Mont'g)
Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.


Carrington, Matthew
Hind, Kenneth


Chope, Christopher
Hood, Jimmy


Conway, Derek
Howard, Rt Hon Michael


Cook, Robin (Livingston)
Hughes, Simon (Southwark)


Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)
Jack, Michael


Cryer, Bob
Janner, Greville


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Jessel, Toby





Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)
Portillo, Michael


Kennedy, Charles
Powell, Ray (Ogmore)


King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)
Redwood, John


Kirkhope, Timothy
Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn


Lang, Ian
Renton, Rt Hon Tim


Lawrence, Ivan
Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas


Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Roe, Mrs Marion


Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)
Ross, William (Londonderry E)


Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas
Rowlands, Ted


McAvoy, Thomas
Skinner, Dennis


MacGregor, Rt Hon John
Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)


McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)
Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)


MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)
Steen, Anthony


Maclean, David
Steinberg, Gerry


McLoughlin, Patrick
Stevens, Lewis


Mans, Keith
Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)


Maples, John
Sumberg, David


Marshall, John (Hendon S)
Taylor, Ian (Esher)


Mawhinney, Dr Brian
Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)


Meale, Alan
Thorne, Neil


Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)
Trippier, David


Moonie, Dr Lewis
Vaz, Keith


Morley, Elliot
Wallace, James


Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)
Waller, Gary


Moynihan, Hon Colin
Wareing, Robert N.


Nellist, Dave
Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)


Neubert, Michael
Wheeler, Sir John


Nicholls, Patrick
Widdecombe, Ann


Nicholson, David (Taunton)
Williams, Rt Hon Alan


Norris, Steve
Winnick, David


Oppenheim, Phillip
Wood, Timothy


Paice, James
Yeo, Tim


Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil



Patchett, Terry
Tellers for the Ayes:


Patten, Rt Hon John
Mr. Sydney Chapman and Mr. Irvine Patnick.


Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey



Pike, Peter L.





NOES


Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)
Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Illsley, Eric
Winterton, Nicholas


Maclennan, Robert



Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Tellers for the Noes:


Stanbrook, Ivor
Mr. Michael Irvine and Mr. Nicholas Bennett.


Stokes, Sir John

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

Homelessness (Leicester)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

Mr. Keith Vaz: I understand that this is the first time that the House has debated homelessness in Leicestershire, but because of my constituency interest I have decided to concentrate on the city of Leicester and the crisis of housing in it.
In my weekly surgeries, whether they be in Northfields, Netherhall, Thurnby Lodge, Goodwood, Evington, Coleman, Belgrave or Rushy Mead, one issue dominates the work of my constituency—the problem of housing. It is a fundamental right of every citizen of Leicester to have a home that is warm, dry, decent and affordable. It is clear from statistics that that fundamental right is being breached every minute of every day for thousands of people who live in Leicester.
The debate is not only about statistics but about the human misery lying behind the crisis of housing. It causes anguish and despair. Men and women who have visited my surgery have wept openly because they cannot get a council house or be transferred to another. People have literally gone down on their knees and begged me to do something to alleviate the overcrowded and damp conditions in which they live. Letters, petitions and phone calls have been made to my staff, with appeals of such desperation that it is impossible not to be moved and to become emotional about their plight. The blame for that trauma lies with the Government. On an evening when we have discussed war crimes, in the war against homelessness the Government's inaction borders on the criminal.
The sickness that the housing crisis creates manifests itself in the breakdown of family life and in some cases leads to divorce, illness, abuse, violence and intolerable stress. It plagues parents and children and delivers them into a world of desperation and unhappiness.
I thank Leicester city council for the work that it does and acknowledge the assistance that I have received from Councillors Surinder Sharmar and David Brazier in my preparation for this debate. In addition, three officers, John Perry, Phil Howard and Christine Laird, have provided valuable assistance. I want to pay tribute to all who work in the sector and have the agonising task of allocating property, in particular Peter Jones and the Humberstone area office, who cope not only with diminishing resources but a Member of Parliament who demands everything yesterday. I make no apology for being over-zealous in protecting my constituents.
Leicester faces a severe housing crisis as a result of Government policies, which have systematically discriminated against the public sector provision of housing. There are over 11,000 applicants on the council's housing waiting list, many of whom face a wait of many years for properties in the areas of their choice. The number of vacancies is 30 per cent. lower than 12 months ago. There are significant parts of the city where no waiting list applicant has been rehoused over the past year. In many parts of the city, turnover rates are far lowr than required to service the waiting and transfer lists. The average stay for a tenant is now 25 years. Turnover rates are particularly low for three and four-bedroom properties; the average stay for a tenant of such a property is 27 years.
The lack of property to meet demand throughout most of the city is a clear sign of the combined effects of the Government's right-to-buy policy and the low level of activity in the private sector because of high interest rates. Over 20 per cent. of the city council's housing stock has been lost through the right to buy. That represents 9,000 dwellings. Conversely, high interest rates are producing additional demand on council stock because of the increased number of mortgage repossessions and owner-occupiers selling their properties because they can no longer afford mortgage payments.
The crisis in housing is particularly reflected in a marked increase in homelessness. An average of 57 cases per month are now being accepted—an increase of 32 per cent. on last year. That increase in activity is reflected in a commensurate rise in the average number of interviews carried out by the homeless and hostel section of the city council, which currently stands at 750 a month. Changes in the benefits system, including for people in board and lodgings and hostel dwellers, have helped to fuel the crisis. For council tenants, they have also contributed to a major increase in rent arrears.
There are simply not enough properties to go around. The Leicester structure plan proposed that 17,400 properties should be built between 1981 and 1986, an average of 1,160 a year. Only 323 completions were made from all sectors in 1988–89, making a total of 4,033 from 1981 to 1989. Due to financial restrictions placed on the city council by the Government, there has been no new build programme for the past four years, although the council is making major efforts to facilitate the provision of social housing by other agencies.
The condition of properties is also a major cause for concern, with 1,975 estate and 650 acquired properties that remain unmodernised. Parts of my constituency, particularly the Northfields estate, are a prime example. It would cost over £11 million to refurbish the estate properties on an elemental basis. Full modernisation would cost over £37 million.
Housing renewal is just as bleak. Nearly 3 million houses are in unsatisfactory condition, by the Government's own standards—15 per cent. of the en tire housing stock. There has been hardly any improvement since 1981 in the number of properties in serious disrepair. Over half the properties in poor condition are owner-occupied, often by people on low incomes who are least likely to do repair work. Any increased help through improvement grants must be set against the declining spending power of the poorest 20 per cent. of wage earners who increasingly cannot afford mortgage and repair costs. Private landlords are failing to invest in older housing. On average, privately rented property has twice as much outstanding repair work as other property, despite deregulation of rents.
The new means test for improvement grants which has been initiated by the Government will be far too harsh on people with modest incomes. It will not help those on the Norton estate who have been seeking to modernise their properties. At present rates of clearance, houses that are unfit now will still be awaiting replacement in 100 years' time. The Government have failed to grasp the need for more incentives to facilitate clearance of the worst housing by giving adequate compensation to dispossessed householders.
The Conservative-controlled Association of District Councils assesses the backlog of disrepair in England to be


£50 billion and calculates that private sector support from local authorities will have to run at twice the present levels if unsatisfactory housing is to be eliminated within 10 years. I remind the Minister of the answer that he gave me in a written reply on 3 November 1989, which shows a massive drop in the housing allocation in real terms—£24 million in 1981–82 to £13·716 million in 1988–89.
A similar crisis is affecting the Housing Corporation and the housing associations. The Housing Corporation has reduced its allocation to Leicester from £13·5 million in 1989–90 to £9 million in 1990–91. Housing Association rehabilitation work has also been drastically cut in Leicester due to the problems being experienced with the new mixed funding regime. There were 80 such projects in 1988–89, while there were just 12 in 1989–90.
I shall tell the Minister just some of the comments that I have received since I told local housing associations that I would have this debate. Referring to the new grant regime, the chief executive of Leicester Housing Association Ltd. said:
The new Grant Regime does nothing to assist the urban renewal process … the Total Cost Indicator Category for Leicester is appallingly low when one considers land prices within Leicester as compared to land prices within other areas of the country in the same Category … This further and substantially inhibits the viability of both 'New Build' and `Rehabilitation' schemes.
In a letter to me dated 23 April Mr. Tony Mawby, the director of ASRA, said:
Those of us trying to provide homes for a very disadvantaged part of the Community of Leicester are especially vulnerable to the new funding regime introduced by the 1988 Housing Act.
Mrs. Pat Elderfield, the chief executive of East Midlands Housing Association, said:
The new funding system therefore is not only reducing the number of new rented units but is likely to see a rapid reversal of private investment, an issue of wider national concern.
Denis O'Sullivan, the director of the Leicester Family Housing Association, John Walker, the director of the Leicester Federation of Housing Societies, and Harry Perry, the director of the Leicester Newark Housing Association, all raise new difficulties caused by the allocation by the Government. Mr. Perry refers to the case of a young homeless Wigston teenager who was found living in a shed on a railway siding. The council refused to rehouse her and she had to come to the city to be rehoused. He also pointed to the Education (Student Loans) Bill and the abolition of housing benefit as further examples of causes of decline.
Not only the housing associations but the voluntary organisations have raised the matter with me. In a letter to me, Mr. John Elliott, the chairman of the Leicester Shelter group, said that he ran an emergency telephone service on behalf of the Leicester Shelter housing aid and research project. He said that he recently received a call from a woman on a Sunday. He said:
She was literally homeless that night. I could not find a single hostel vacancy, not even in the emergency Night Shelter.
All women are at risk at night—to sleep rough places them in a potentially dangerous situation. I am horrified that there is frequently no emergency accommodation in the city to offer shelter and protection.

Shelter's annual report published recently shows that the number of people who are homeless in the city has doubled. It dealt with 662 inquiries in 1978. In 1989 that figure was 1,351, an increase of 104 per cent. It says:
The type of enquiries has become much more severe, with the number of literally homeless people rising from 86 in 1979 to 289 in 1989, a phenomenal rise of 236 per cent.
It concludes its report by saying:
This desperate situation is not the result of an accident but is the predictable (and predicted) outcome of existing Government policy.
In letters that I have received from local people and councillors in the past few hours, it is clear where they believe that the blame lies. Mr. Les George, a former tenants' association committee member from Humberstone, asks what has been done about the amount of private properties that have been left unfilled. Local councillors in my constituency, including Andrew Parmas and Roy Stuttard in west Humberstone, Amu Devar and Merlyn Vaz in Charnwood, Dave Thomas in Coleman, Bhupin Dave of Latimer, Ramik Kavia and Mustapha Kamal of Belgrave, Mike Preston in Humberstone all talk about financial robbery by the Government of the city council.
A local councillor in Coleman, Mary Draycott, said that nothing was being done for the disabled. She said:
Many disabled are forced to lead lives confined to rooms or even chairs like prisoners. Social Service funds cannot cope with the number of adaptations needed to improve peoples lives early enough due to lack of funds.
I pay tribute to the officers and committee members of all the tenants' associations in my constituency, including Frank Kerr, Arthur Padmore, Selwyn Williams, Carole Simpson, Lyn Lowells, Bill and Jean Cooper, Bob Smith and full-time workers Kevin Brown, Nirmal Bahsey and Adrian Waite who dealt with many of the problems brought to Members of Parliament and local councillors. They champion tirelessly the cause of tenants. Three of them wrote to me.
Ken Webb, chairman of the St. Mark's tenants' association, a non-political organisation, said:
This Government have categorically, and consistently reduced the level of financing to City Council in respect of all housing requirements placed on City Council … despite pressure from the various organisations who wish to see a positive and constructive improvement in all aspects of housing in the City.
Walter Lindsay, the chairman of the Rowletts Hill tenants' and residents association, said:
How can a council be expected to house homeless people without new build for rent at reasonable prices? You cannot keep putting rents up without a corresponding rise in wages and benefits. This is like moving the goalposts every time the ball comes near to them.
Diane Cank, the secretary of the Morton, Northfields and Tailby tenants association wrote about one of the worst parts of my constituency, which is in desperate need of further finance. She said:
The standard of properties available has dropped dramatically, some properties on the Northfields and Tailby estates still have sandstone sinks and pumps in. Many properties are unfit to live in, modernisation of properties is often too long awaited for and when done of poor standard. Properties on the Northfields Estate suffer from cracking walls and ceilings, damp and subsidence.
If the Government need a memorial to their housing policies, they need look no further than the Hamilton estate in the eastern part of my constituency. It was planned for 4,000 homes; only 133 are built and less than 50 are occupied. The Government's disastrous economic policies have meant that people cannot afford their


mortgages and homes lie empty. I wanted it to be a showpiece for my city, but the Government have stopped that happening.
It is as though we have entered a time warp—immovable waiting lists meeting the Government's inflexible policies, and resulting in social catastrophy. If we are truly to give people the homes they need, the Government must get off their ideological high horse and allow the council and housing associations to build and rent. The consequence of failing to do so is to condemn a generation of my fellow citizens to a life of despair.

Mr. Greville Janner: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) on raising this important matter in the House, and I thank him for sparing some of his time. He, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall) and I find that our surgeries and constituency mail are overloaded with complaints from people suffering great hardship through homelessness.
The reasons for that are clear. There are only two types of housing: public and private. No new houses can be built in the public sector, and houses in existence are being sold. In the private sector, people cannot afford to pay their mortgages because of the high interest rates. There is high unemployment in the knitwear, hosiery and footwear industries and too many people are being driven on to the public market, which has a shrinking stock. The result is a growth in homelessness and people who literally do not have a roof over their heads.
There are not just 11,000 such people, but 11,000 applications. A growing number of people are suffering from the savage homelessness. That figure is, as my hon. Friend said, a direct result of the Government's housing policies in Leicestershire. I greatly hope that the Minister may provide some hope for the future for our people by saying that the Government will recognise the desperate nature of the situation and provide more central funding, which is so badly needed for many of our Leicester constituents in this awful predicament.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Christopher Chope): It is a matter of regret that we have been treated this evening to an extraordinarily negative and whingeing speech from the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) and the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner). They failed to give credit where credit was due and have done the people of Leicester a great disservice.
Although Leicester city council is not run by the Conservatives—it would be much better run if it were—I shall not be so churlish as to suggest that everything that it does is appalling. Many of its actions on housing have been sensible and productive. The condition of the housing stock in Leicester has improved dramatically during the present Government's lifetime. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Leicester, East does not seem prepared to accept that, because it is a fact.
I was lucky enough to visit Leicester about a month ago. I was taken round by the chairman of the housing committee and saw many things on the ground. I was able to see the improvements that have been made in housing in Leicester. They have been made largely as a result of the

Government's generosity and the far-sightedness of their housing policies, which have concentrated on providing the resources to improve the quality of the housing stock, both in the private and public sector.
Listening to the hon. Gentleman, one would not have thought that capital spending on housing in Leicester in the past two years amounted to about £75 million—a vast amount—and that this year the amount may be as much as £25 million as a result of a much increased housing investment programme allocation. If the hon. Gentleman suggests that all that capital spending has not produced any improvements, that is a sad reflection on the council's way of spending its money. A fairer view, however, can be taken. That money has been reasonably well invested in housing in Leicester, and as a result, housing in Leicester is much better than it would otherwise have been.
I do not think that we should have any truck with the negative approach adopted by the hon. Gentleman this evening. He does his constituents and the many people who work actively to improve housing in Leicester a disservice by suggesting that their efforts have been to no avail. Housing in Leicester has improved beyond all measure during the lifetime of this Government.
The housing investment programme allocation to Leicester this year is about £18·32 million. Out of 47 authorities in England with populations between 200,000 and 350,000, Leicester is the 16th largest, but it has the ninth largest housing investment programme allocation, reflecting its relatively high housing needs. That shows that the Government recognise those housing needs and, more importantly, that they are taking action to ensure that the resources are provided.
On top of the housing investment programme allocation, substantial special credit allocations are likely to be made. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is also the money available from capital receipts from the sale of council houses. The hon. Gentleman made it clear that he does not believe in the right to buy. He resents those in Leicester who have exercised that right under this Government. A Labour Government would deprive people of the right to buy, because they resent the rights of owner-occupation, and the freedom that goes with it. With owner-occupation also goes a willingness of people to pay more towards the cost of their own housing, thereby ensuring that the taxpayer's resources can go to those in greatest need.
The Housing Corporation has made a generous allocation to Leicester. A total of £13·6 million has been committed to housing provision in Leicestershire during the past financial year, and at least 500 units of accommodation have already been provided. Another 130 are on the way. Of this funding, more than £12·5 million went to the city of Leicester-£10·7 million into rented housing, and the rest into low-cost housing for sale. Within these amounts, the corporation gives high priority to schemes for the homeless, but any house provided for rent should be of help to the homeless so long as the greatest needs are met first.
Leicester City is one of the areas in which we are providing support through the citizens advice bureau for additional advice to the homeless. That should help take pressure off the Leicester homelessness unit and help ensure that each person gets full attention so that the optimum solution to his problems is found.
We also have our targeted estate action scheme, through which we have helped Leicester city increase the


attractiveness of some of its poorer housing estates, thereby reducing re-let times and vacancy rates. The turnaround at St. Peter's and St. Matthew's estates has been remarkable. I look forward to implementation of the plans at Mowmacre estate which I visited recently. These include more temporary accommodation for the homeless.

Mr. Vaz: What can the Government do to help the city council build more council houses?

Mr. Chope: It is up to the city council to decide how it spends its resources. It has chosen sensibly to invest most of them in improving the condition of its existing housing stock, so that empty units are brought into use and the quality of its housing stock is improved. The hon. Gentleman implies that he disagrees with that, but it must be for the council to decide how to allocate its resources. The Government have put in substantial funds and we have provided a range of opportunities. One of the best bargains available to a local authority is to assist a housing association to provide rented accommodation in a mixed funded scheme.
In Leicestershire an association can raise about one third of the cost of providing family houses or bungalows on the private market. An authority can pay the balance, obtaining three rented houses for the cost of two. The amount it contributes is repaid immediately by the Housing Corporation, so there is no real cost, although the outlay counts against the capital expenditure programme. As far as I am aware, no Leicestershire authority has yet taken advantage of this provision. Any council still planning to build its own houses for rent ought to consider this most attractive alternative. I hope that Leicester city council will do that following this debate.
Councils can put in land at nil value, with the Secretary of State's consent, in order to help housing associations provide low-cost housing. Some Leicestershire districts have been making land available to housing associations in this way and have thereby been able to keep would-be home owners out of scarce rented housing. Often they have been able to arrange for some rented housing to go on these sites as well. Leicester city council has been working with a consortium of housing associations to develop several inner city sites. That is a constructive approach which bodes well for the future.
Another way to take pressure off the rented stock lies in our arrangement under the new capital finance provisions which permit local authorities to reinvest all the proceeds of houses that they build for sale. Where there is a shortage of low-cost housing for sale, councils should be able to set up self-financing rolling programmes or, if they can find some funding, programmes of shared ownership with a limited public sector input. In this way, too, they can divert demand from their waiting lists and free their rented housing for those who need it most.
Along the same lines we have introduced a cash incentive scheme whereby, with the Secretary of State's consent, councils can introduce schemes for paying cash grants to tenants who are ready to move into owner occupation. This is probably the cheapest way of producing a council letting for a homeless person. It is

regrettable that hitherto Leicester city council has not made any application for such a scheme. It has the resources to pursue such a scheme and I hope that following this debate it will see that opportunity to try to improve matters.
The Government have a range of initiatives to facilitate the improvement of housing conditions, the better use of housing stock and so on, but at the end of the day it is for the housing authority to take charge of its own destiny. Leicester could do more to promote the right to buy, thereby releasing more capital receipts, and it could certainly do more for tenants through the incentive scheme to which I have referred. The resources and the opportunities are there. It is for councils to take them and to manage their own stock as efficiently as possible.
In Leicester city, vacancy rates have been falling. The Government have been critical of the high levels of vacancies in existing council stock. The figures in the housing investment programme return show that by April 1989 Leicester city had succeeded in reducing its void rate from 3·73 to 2·77 per cent. That is certainly progress, but every tenth of 1 per cent. that vacancies can be further reduced provides another 30 houses for the homeless in Leicester. There is a real incentive there for the authority to be even more efficient in turning round its voids.
In a determination under section 167 of the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, we have provided for local authorities to report on their stewardship to their tenants, giving key statistics on vacancies and other matters. I hope that that will be an incentive for greater efficiency in stock utilisation. All these measures are designed to increase the supply of rented housing and ensure that it goes to those who really need it.
The Government have a good record of assisting the housing department of Leicester city council and housing associations in Leicester and Leicestershire. I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman has not given us some credit for that, because credit is certainly due. From the emotional tone of his speech, one would have imagined that hundreds of families are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation in Leicester. Other housing authorities will certainly be interested to note that the figures for the last quarter of 1989 show that no households in Leicester were in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. When we compare that fact with the position in many council areas we see that, relatively speaking, the problems are nothing like as bad as the hon. Gentleman has suggested.
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to draw attention to the Government's fine record of contributing to better-quality housing and a better quality of life for people in Leicester. Leicester city council is at its best when it is not keen on getting involved in ideology and putting that before the needs of its people. I am disappointed at the way in which the council recently put ideology first and gave a tender for a major contract to its in-house direct service organisation even though a lower contract was submitted by an outside contractor.

The motion having been made after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at ten minutes past One o'clock.